Sometimes I really do think that local means yokel. This is never more the case then when it comes to local television news. Somehow it manages to get on our screens twice a day on both BBC1 and ITV, despite it being dull, unimaginative, and generally a waste of everyone’s time. At the expense of sounding like the stereotypical, capital-centric Londoner, I’ll admit that the first time I ever came in contact with local news was when I came to Oxford.
At first I thought maybe I was just missing the familiar faces and format of the local news I was used to at home, but it didn’t take too long for me to realise that what I was watching really was of embarrassingly poor quality. Of course we have local London news, but the crucial difference is that things actually happen in London. Similarly I’ve been reliably informed that local news in Northern Ireland doesn’t lack for drama • “Raid on local paramilitary group,” “Multi-million pound bank robbery” • it’s hard to argue that these headlines are anything other than eye-catching, and of course relevant to the lives of people watching. Before you start writing angry letters about how happening life is in the Outer Hebrides, let me give some examples of recent news stories on our very own BBC South Today. My absolute favourite was the day when “Funny smell on High Street” was the lead story. On the BBC Oxford Website on Saturday, the top story was “Choirs prepare for church concert.” Stop the press! Why haven’t the nationals picked up on that one? It is patronising beyond belief for such programmes to assume that their audiences are so parochial that they will be interested in something just because it occurred in their county, however banal it is. Of course there are other problems with local news, notably the reporters and anchors. The faux-flirtation amongst news anchors weather people and sports reporters is as nauseating as it is universal; I assume that the overenthusiastic reporting on the progress of local football teams, is designed to make audiences feel that their local news team are ‘just like them’, but the act is fooling nobody.
