November 16: Carter's candour over Kent TV
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KCC
leader Paul Carter was refreshingly – and
intriguingly - candid about his feelings about Kent TV when he addressed
a backbench committee last week.
It struck me as quite clear that the
ruling Conservative administration is genuinely undecided about
whether to continue with the scheme after next March.
(That is in direct contrast to the
views of certain senior officers, who undoubtedly feel Kent TV is a
raging success and should continue).
I suspect that when the Conservative
cabinet heads off for an away-day later this month to take the
final decision, the discussion will focus primarily on how, if Kent
TV does carry on, it will be funded.
Despite some suggestion that other
public sector agencies – Kent Police, the NHS – might stump up some
cash, I’ve not heard or seen any firm commitments from
anywhere.
After last week’s
news about the need to plug a £200million shortfall in the
council’s coffers over the next three years and six to seven
hundred job losses, the main message coming out of County Hall is
that it will be frontline services that are safeguarded at all
costs and there will be very little room for optional extras of a
non-discretionary nature.
Continuing to spend
£600,000 a year on what many regard as a
non-essential service will be hard to justify at a time of
restraint elsewhere, especially if it ends up that the authority
does have to wield the knife in frontline services.
Less surprising was the enthusiastic
endorsement of the consultants CapGemini who were asked to come up
with a review of how well Kent TV had done over its first two
years.
Nigel Waterson, the company’s head of
strategy, delivered a largely upbeat assessment with only minor
caveats about the scheme and told last week’s meeting that KCC were
"innovators" and had created something they should be proud of.
However, he was less fulsome about the
claim often made by KCC that Kent TV had saved money by cutting
back on other publicity, saying: "I found it difficult to get down
to the detail of whether you [KCC] have saved paper or not".
On the question of how it might be
funded in the future, he was also less forthcoming, diplomatically
alluding to the possibility of continuing with what he termed
"incubation funding" to keep it afloat. (£1.8million strikes me as
rather a lot of incubation funding).
However, he did say that Kent TV
should consider carrying more news and raise more revenue from
advertising – which are precisely the most contentious areas of the
initiative. (The latter touches on the thorny issue of whether such
a news service could be properly independent and whether it is
right to spend public money on what might be seen as a propaganda
vehicle.)
Either way, KCC leader Paul Carter
does at least appear to have a genuinely open mind.
Monday, November 16 2009
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