Government to ditch local media rules

The coalition government is planning to ditch the rules governing local cross-media ownership by the end of 2010 and put forward a new communications bill by late 2012.

Yesterday, the Department of Culture Media and Sport unveiled a series of proposals for the media and technology sectors.

The measures included pushing back the previous Labour administration's pledge to provide broadband of a minimum speed of 2Mbps for every household in the UK from 2012 to 2015.

DCMS wants to start licensing a new generation of local television networks by the summer of 2012. It also plans to finish negotiations with the BBC over a new licence fee settlement by April of that year.

The department further said that it will decide by January 2012 whether to use part of the television licence fee - particularly the surplus from the digital TV switchover - to fund broadband delivery projects in hard-to-reach rural areas.

Work on creating a new communications bill will start in November this year, with draft legislation due to be put before parliament two years later and the act expected to become law in 2015.

DCMS said that it wants 10 or 20 local TV stations to be given operating licences by the end of 2015. The government has also commissioned Lazard media banker Nick Shott to conduct an independent review of the local TV sector.

A relaxation of the cross-media ownership regulations will be introduced in November as the coalition looks to stimulate innovation in the local media sector.

The government said that it hopes to "foster the development of a new breed of strong local media groups by removing local cross-media ownership rules to encourage local TV".

That approach follows the ditching of the previous government's independently funded news consortium scheme for private groups taking over ITV regional news services.

"I want my department to help make the 'big society' a reality," said culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Later, he added: "I want Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe, and I will do everything I can to incentivise business to invest in this, so we can get there by 2015 - opening up the infrastructure and levelling the playing field for new investment. We will roll back media regulation where it's preventing growth."

Separately, DCMS is also exploring options for opening up the BBC's accounts to the National Audit Office to foster greater transparency, which could go ahead by the end of 2011.