South Korea's Broadcast Media Communications Commission and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said on Jan. 27 they will strengthen support this year for regional and small media outlets' digital transformation and content production.

This year, the commission and the ministry set the budget for supporting regional and small broadcasters at 20.2 billion won, a 2.5-fold increase from the previous year. The move is meant to implement a government policy task aimed at restoring media public service by expanding support for regional and small media outlets.

The commission will increase its support budget to strengthen regional and small broadcasters' content competitiveness to 5.4 billion won this year from about 4.4 billion won last year. It will raise the production budget for locally focused programmes by 1 billion won from last year. It will also continue support for content distribution and training to strengthen professional capacity.

The culture ministry will sharply increase its support budget for regional and small broadcasters through the Korea Press Foundation to 14.8 billion won this year from about 3.5 billion won last year. It set 3.5 billion won to support reporting by regional broadcasters and also set a new 7.9 billion won budget to support digital transformation. Support through public service advertising will be 3.4 billion won, strengthened from 2.2 billion won last year.

The culture ministry will also strengthen support for local newspapers. This year, it set the Local Newspaper Development Fund at a total of 11.8 billion won, an increase of 3.5 billion won from last year. The fund will be focused on strengthening local newspapers' digital capabilities and improving the quality of in-depth reporting.

The budget for the "Local Newspaper Proposal Project", which supports innovative ideas from local newspapers, rose sharply to 2.0 billion won from 300 million won last year. The budget for "planned reporting support", which encourages in-depth coverage of local issues, was also set at 1.0 billion won, double last year's level.

To respond to changing news consumption patterns and help produce high-quality digital content, the budget for "digital reporting equipment rental" was raised to 3.05 billion won from 1.65 billion won the previous year, nearly doubling. Through this, it will expand support for the latest equipment such as drones to accelerate local newspapers' digital transformation and boost content competitiveness.

Commission Chairman Jong-chul Kim (김종철) said, "Amid the crisis of regional decline, the role of regional broadcasting is important in establishing the identity of local communities." He added, "We will spare no support so that regional broadcasting can secure competitiveness with differentiated, region-specialised content and build a foundation for sustainable development."

Culture Minister Hwi-young Choi (최휘영) said, "Local media are a core pillar supporting residents' right to know and local democracy." He added, "We will support local media by focusing on content production capacity and improving the reporting environment so they can cover local issues in depth, and we will steadily underpin the public interest function of local media."