ABSTRACT
During this chapter we will continue to explore the translation process of our digital technology, PDP or video journalism. As the quote suggests, any story of translation involves multiple transformations of all the human and nonhuman actors involved, and we will discover that PDP is once again quite radically altered in various unpredictable ways throughout its ongoing translation process. As our story develops so too does our network. No longer confined to the Nottingham newsroom, this episode of the story takes us into other radio and television newsrooms in various separate locations throughout the West Midlands. This is the story of the BBC’s local television experiment: a pilot project carried out by BBC Nations and Regions during a nine-month period from December 2005 until August 2006. The aim of the project was to provide a specifically local television service for six West Midlands’ geographical areas similar to those serviced by the BBC’s local radio stations. Therefore the existing local radio areas were used as the subregions at which the six pilot services were targeted. These were Birmingham, The Black Country, Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire, Coventry and Warwickshire, and Staffordshire. Five video journalists and two producers were located at each location. The local television trial was intended to use the existing infrastructure of both local radio and the BBC’s internet sites to create fully integrated multimedia production centres, providing the whole range of the BBC’s services for the local area.
