The plan was announced by David Cameron and Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and will review bureaucratic regulations around the ownership of local newspapers and would allow local newspapers to consolidate across platforms into online, TV and Radio.
This will mean local newspapers will have the freedom to adapt to the digital world and develop new business models for the future. Most significantly this will encourage local newspaper groups, such as Archant who own the Eastern Daily Press, the East Anglian Daily Times, the Lowestoft Journal and the Beccles and Bungay Journal to invest in ultra local television services.
David Cameron said "local newspapers are closing and staff are being made redundant in the face of falling advertising revenue and competition from the internet and local authority free sheets. That's why the Conservative Party is going to announce plans to sweep away the bureaucratic rules that mean that a rigid law decides who owns what bits of the media in local communities. This will give local newspapers more freedom to adapt to the digital world and develop new business models for the twenty first century."
Jeremy Hunt added: "the current rules were established in a pre-digital age. It is now time to allow new industry models to emerge that will encourage investment not just in local papers but in local online services and new local TV companies."
Peter Aldous said: "I am fully behind the ideas put forward by the Conservatives to help struggling local newspapers. We are lucky to have great local newspapers such as the EDP, the EADT, the Lowestoft Journal and the Beccles and Bungay Journal in this area, so it would be a travesty if the Labour Government's bureaucracy and regulations mean they are reduced by cutbacks.
