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Episode details

Radio 4,17 Feb 2016,30 mins

Independent moves online, Editor-in-chief of Huffington Post UK, Genre-led divisions at the BBC

The Media Show

Available for over a year

After thirty years, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday are to end their print editions next month - although they'll continue online. In addition, sister paper i has been sold to Johnston Press for £24 million. The Independent was selling more than 400,000 copies a day at its peak in the late 1980s, but its current paid circulation is around 56,000. Steve Hewlett talks to two key decision makers involved in the change; Amol Rajan, Editor of The Independent and Steve Auckland, Group CEO of ESI Media, which owns all three titles. Today, we also hear from the Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post UK. The British incarnation of the online platform founded in the US in 2005 is now just one of legion 'digital native' content organisations, credited with playing a part in the demise of news in print. Today, Huffington Post UK will be guest edited by the Duchess of Cambridge. To discuss how this and other innovations might also raise the profile of the Huffington Post UK, Steve Hewlett is joined by Editor in Chief Stephen Hull. BBC 3 has this week become an online-only platform. It follows reports that BBC 3 might merge with Radio 1 to form a new 'BBC Youth' brand, and that the BBC Director General Tony Hall may soon announce plans for a corporation-wide restructuring into genre-led divisions, such as BBC Inform & BBC Entertain, rather than channels. Steve is joined by Lorraine Heggessey, former Controller of BBC 1 and Tim Suter, media consultant & founding partner in Ofcom, to discuss the pros and cons of reshaping BBC content in this way. Producer: Katy Takatsuki.

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