Carolyn McCall and Sly Bailey attack BBC local online video news plansThe BBC's plans for local online video news services came under renewed attack today, as the chief executives of Guardian Media Group Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian, The Observer and the Manchester Evening News. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. and Trinity Mirror Trinity Mirror plc is a large United Kingdom newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, People, Sunday Mail and Daily Record. told a House of Commons House of Commons: see Parliament. select committee that the proposals could put local newspapers out of business. Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of GMG GMG Giornata Mondiale della Gioventù (Italian: World Youth Day) GMG Guardian Media Group GMG Game Group PLC (stock symbol) GMG Grenade Machine Gun , which publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, and the Trinity Mirror chief executive, Sly Bailey, also both questioned the role of the BBC Trust The BBC Trust is a body that oversees the BBC, being independent of BBC management and external bodies. Along with an Executive Board, the Trust took over the role of the old Board of Governors on 1 January 2007. in deciding whether the corporation's local online news plans should be allowed to proceed. McCall said her group's flagship regional newspaper title, the Manchester Evening News The Manchester Evening News is an English daily newspaper published each week day evening and on Saturdays. It is distributed in Manchester and surrounding areas. It sells around 115,000 copies per day[1] , was fighting for survival in the advertising downturn. She added that if regional newspapers are put out of business "you end up with a very strong BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. and nothing else" when it comes to providing local news. Bailey painted an equally grim picture of the regional newspaper business, saying her company had closed 44 local and titles this year because of the advertising downturn and the industry's structural move to multimedia publishing. McCall told MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is one of the Select Committees of the British House of Commons, having been established in 1997. It oversees the operations of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport which replaced the defunct Department for National Heritage. : "The Manchester Evening News is fighting to survive - that's not a dramatic phrase. Margins in the regional press are being squeezed very hard and the issue for me is significant, not just for me because I'm a publisher but because I think this is a danger to plurality The opinion of an appellate court in which more justices join than in any concurring opinion. The excess of votes cast for one candidate over those votes cast for any other candidate. Appellate panels are made up of three or more justices. , diversity and democracy. "I think if you start losing local newspaper local websites you end up with a very strong BBC and nothing else." McCall also questioned the BBC Trust's role in deciding the fate of the corporation's local online video news plans. The BBC Trust is conducting a public value test over proposals by the corporation to spend up to £23m a year to create video-based news websites in 60 regions of the UK. "The trust has made it clear to management that it's a strategic imperative to enter local," she said. "When we then engage with the trust and say we have a real problem with local video, who are we talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to" lecture, speech rebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to - the regulator or someone championing the BBC? A regulator should be unambiguously a regulator," McCall added. Bailey told the committee that any BBC local online video service, regardless of limits placed on it, would draw an audience away from local services offered by commercial rivals. "The BBC has lost sight of its strategy, it has lost sight of its purpose, its using public money to compete in public areas where it simply doesn't need to be. All organisations need parameters and targets," Bailey told the committee. "The problem with the BBC right now is that in its quest to serve all audiences it is clearly without parameters, as a result of that I would say to you that the management are out of control and the trust are not in control." More details soon… · To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332. · If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". 
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