It is not Local TV in the style that Jeremy Hunt has advocated. Nor is it recognisably an on-line version of the kind of regional news produced by the BBC and ITV. Reporters here are banned from using such regional newsroom staples as set-up shots of people walking self consciously past camera or making tea. So what exactly is Sky Tyne and Wear?
Simon Bucks
According to Simon Bucks, the associate editor of Sky News and the man responsible for setting up the project in the North East, it is an innovative on-line local news and information service for the 1.2m people living and working on the Rivers Tyne and Wear. The site is free and contains video reports, news updates, local sport, and an events service for the Newcastle and Sunderland conurbations.
Sky opened its doors to more than thirty television and media professionals at an event organised by the Royal Television Society in Newcastle at the end of May. Seven of their team of eight video journalists and all five editors turned out to show off their production office, their mobile editing and camera kits.
James Marley, Editor of Sky Tyne & Wear, explains the editorial policy
The group heard that the decision by Sky to pilot the service in the North East had already had a dramatic impact on the local economy. As well as the thirteen new Sky jobs, editors of at least two local newspapers have responded to the new on-line service by recruiting a new batch of their own video journalists.
Simon Bucks explained that there are currently no plans to take advertising on the site — which last month recorded 300,000 individual hits. But he didn’t rule out ads and sponsorship for the future.
“Sky gets most of its income from subscribers,” he said. “We offer Sky News, Sky Arts and now Sky Tyne and Wear as a service to our customers. It is not always about having to make money. Sky Tyne and Wear has to have a value, but it doesn’t have to be calculated in terms of profit.”
Sky News and Sky Sports has already benefited from the presence of Sky Tyne and Wear. Items produced for the local service — such as the taking down of the signs at St James’s Park and the discovery of a monster rat in County Durham — regularly find their way on to the main channels. And the day after the visit, when Tyneside was deluged by flash floods, the site recorded its biggest-ever audience of 35,000 unique hits.
From the audience, VJ India Adams tells of her experiences as a Video Journalist.
Simon Bucks refused to be drawn on whether the Tyne and Wear pilot might be rolled out in other parts of the UK. But he revealed the project had attracted interest at the “highest level” within Sky.
Freelance broadcaster Graeme Aldous observed that the young team responsible for the local service were pioneering a new approach to producing content. “I envy you. You are at the cutting edge of a new kind of content production and delivery. You are first into this market and can afford to be experimental. It reminds me so much of the early days in BBC local radio when no one thought it would work – so we just made it up as we went along.”
Sport Producer James Craggs shows some of the kit used to capture the stories.
Some members of the audience – who had travelled north to Newcastle from Teesside - complained their area had been “marginalised” by television regional news services from the BBC and Tyne Tees with transmission areas stretching from the Scottish Borders to North Yorkshire. They urged Sky to consider launching a version of the on-line service for the Tees Valley.
The Sky team admitted they were happy with the feedback they have been getting from users since the service launched on Valentines Day 2012. They expect audiences to build and are already anticipating a further step-change in demand once domestic televisions are enabled for IPTV.
GRAEME THOMPSON