It is understood that at a Department of Culture, Media and Sport local media summit in Westminster yesterday - convened by the Government to devise support for the troubled sector - the BBC discussed a range of plans to aid the sector.
Among its plans, the BBC is floating the idea of opening up its iPlayer VoD technology for local and regional media players.
Doing so would provide a major boost to local media providers by making it cheaper for rivals to build their own VoD offerings on their websites.
It is thought, however, the BBC would not allow third parties the ability to place their own material on the iPlayer catch-up service.
Also, the BBC is considering offering local newspaper and radio players' access to the BBC's College of Journalism to aid with training and development.
In addition, it is actively considering sharing some BBC audio content with community and local commercial radio operators - for example, pooling material on diary news stories to reduce duplication.
It is also understood the BBC floated the idea of sharing raw TV picture material with local TV operators and, provided it does not impact on the BBC's output, the sharing of other production and editorial facilities.
The partnership proposals are in addition to a deal struck with ITV earlier this year through which ITV expects to save up to £7m a year through plans to co-locate many of its regional news services with those of the BBC.
As part of plans aimed at both cutting costs and scaling back its regional news provision, ITV signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the BBC that could, over the next decade, help to deliver cost savings for regional news on ITV1.
A BBC source said: "Clearly, this wasn't our summit, so it would not be appropriate for us to brief the discussions that took place, other than it is fair to say the tone was positive and that there was a general recognition that the industry needs to work together far more closely than it has done in the past."
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