VPaterson

Last updated at 01:00, Thursday, 25 October 2007

DISCUSSING a police operation in Maryport, the sergeant told me that he was expecting “Crack and Deek Aboot” (excuse my spelling) to be there.

I looked at him blankly and he had to explain that this was a local dialect name for Border TV's News and Lookaround. It is significant that it has a local nickname.

I am sure the “local” BBC North doesn’t, because BBC North is about the North East with a tiny bit of Cumbria thrown in if there is time or if there is a story here that is just too big to ignore.

Without Lookaround we would be virtually unrepresented on television, and that is a crying shame.

My sister worked for Border in the 70s in its heyday when Derek Batey had the whole nation captivated with his Mr and Mrs programme and when every one of Britain’s top stars would eventually arrive at the Carlisle studios for one reason or another.

There was a real buzz about Cumbria’s own television station in those days that is probably not there now.

But we still do have some lovely programmes that come from these studios and we get to see our local news on television. It would be a sin to lose it.

The television companies are in desperate trouble, of course. BBC bosses have announced 2,500 job losses.

We have already been told that the corporation will reduce its own programme making by about 10 per cent and will be showing more repeats, and that the biggest cuts are likely to be news and current affairs.

The reason is a £2 billion deficit created by the fact that licence fees have not increased as hoped.

And ITV, I read, is losing something like £1.5 million a week since its premium interactive services have been shut down over the phone-in scandal that has rocked the television industry.

The BBC's problems are probably a bit different to ITV. The BBC does not have advertising revenue coming in so depends on the licence fee. And to be honest, if that is all that is standing between the status quo and 2,500 job losses, then maybe we should accept that the fee has to go up.

If it is raised, however, we would need a guarantee of a return to some of the programmes that made the BBC great - it’s documentaries and the period dramas that it could and did sell worldwide.

BBC should concentrate on its core, BBC 1 and 2 and Radios One to Four and get rid of all the extras.

For the commercial stations the problems are different and I have a feeling that some of these are caused by simple laziness and an unwillingness to invest in any quality.

We are fed a steady diet of reality programmes.

The commercial television bosses seem to be content to rest on their withering laurels and bemoan the fact that they are losing money - losing it from a drop in advertising revenue and because up to a million people have made phone calls to programmes such as X Factor and their calls were never counted.

The solutions seem quite simple to me: one, keep better control over interactive programming and make sure that everything is above board. And secondly, provide programmes of a quality that will convince advertisers that is worth their while to advertise.

I can barely run my household budget and I could never run a huge corporation, so I can’t really tell others what to do.

But I can protest vigorously at the commonly held belief of big business that the best way to save money is to cut off the extremities. Keep the big and kill the little.

We saw it when the Primary Care Trust here wanted to save money by turning its attentions to the small hospitals.

Now, when ITV has to save money, it will protect its head office and its bosses and cut off its regional services.

We saved the cottage hospitals in Cumbria. Now let’s save Border News and Lookaround.

The one thing people in London need to realise is that people who choose to live outside the city are still entitled to service. And if we can’t get it here, maybe we should all move to London and see how they like that!

First published at 17:58, Thursday, 24 January 2008
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk