Local TV is out of focus for the Tories

If you want to be part of a regional news consortium, stepping in to let ITV off the hook and mop up a little leftover BBC licence fee money, forget it. This is a Labour wheeze. The Tories will scrap it in May, because they want very local consortiums doing very local news broadcasts four hours a day (and their media maestro, Jeremy Hunt, says he'll tear up any prematurely signed regional contracts). But does anyone suppose that such local alternatives can be born in a trice? No: the nearer we get to a Conservative government, the more problematic the economy – and therefore ad revenue prospects - becomes. No ITV regional news, then. No replacement regional news, either. And, perhaps, no anything while true blue thumbs are intensively sucked.