UK community paper balks at council's Internet channel launch

Posted by Simon Day on September 17, 2009 at 9:58 AM

A UK community newspaper whose ad revenue has already been threatened by council-run and funded newspapers are facing a new local threat in the form of regional government Internet TV, Guardian.co.uk reported Thursday.

Carmarthenshire county council in Wales has announced a planned 12-month pilot of an online channel called Carmarthen TV.

However, opposition councilors and local papers are worried about the use of the channel as a "propaganda tool" that could provide "very one sided" news, according to the Guardian. The council, which currently publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Community News, is planning to drop one issue in order to help fund the TV start-up.

Cathryn Ings, the editor of the Carmarthen Journal, a paper selling 19,000 a week, down 7% from a year ago, said she worries about the channel's effect on her paper's revenue.

"Our main concern has been Community News," she told the Guaridan, "not so much because of taking away readers, but taking away advertising. Now we see this TV proposal as another encroachment on our area of expertise. We are certainly keeping our eye on it."

The channel will broadcast in both English and Welsh, something Ings said is not possible for the paper.