Media regulator Ofcom has admitted it misjudged how long it would take to assess responses to STV’s proposed newsroom changes.
The watchdog was criticised for delaying its report on a consultation process until after the Scottish elections.
Addressing a Commons committee, Ofcom Scotland director Glenn Preston and fellow broadcast director Christina Nicolotti Squires said there had been 1,300 responses to STV’s decision to bring its Aberdeen production into Glasgow.
The restructuring saw 60 staff depart, half of them journalists. There had been concern at the impact of the changes on commercial television coverage of news in the north east of Scotland.
Although 1,196 responses were AI-assisted, each was considered an individual submission and had to be assessed, said the Ofcom representatives. AI offered each person a series of options, and responses were not automatically generated.
One committee member asked why it had taken so long to process submissions when 1,300 was not a particularly large number.
“Maybe we were too ambitious in our timeline for delivering our response,” said Ms Squires. “With hindsight the self-imposed deadline was perhaps unrealistic.”
Both Ms Squires and Mr Preston rejected claims from Donald Lumsden (Con) and David Doogan (SNP) that given the overall opposition the changes, the consultation process was pointless if Ofcom was willing to agree with the broadcaster.
Mr Preston said they had not agreed with STV’s original plan to consolidate news into one programme, pointing out that this “would not comply” with the licence regulations. Ofcom was able to demand changes, which led to the regional opt-outs.
Ms Squires said: “We do not do what the broadcaster tells us to do. Absolutely not.”
Further explaining their decision to accept STV’s broad plans, she said the news programme for the north east was losing viewers.
“A lot of people were strongly against the changes, but they were not watching the programme,” she said. “The audience was declining. This is not because the programme is no good but because audience habits are changing.
“People are consuming news in different ways. Public service broadcasting is in a very difficult place.”
STV was now delivering more news in a way that people want to consume it, she said. Digital video views had risen from 64m a month to 80m in the last couple of months since the changes were introduced.
Following this week’s half-year figures, the broadcaster’s chief executive Rufus Radcliffe told Daily Business that audience figures had risen since the changes were implemented.
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