Local TV

When RTE television Started in 1961 (Telefís Éireann) they used to use to call themselves Channel 7 at times. At that time they were only available generally in Dublin and the East Coast where they had competition from UTV, Granada and the BBC. Once the Network became National, they stopped the practice.

How can you be sure of that without giving it a try? There were people who once argued that there is no demand for breakfast TV in the UK, that there is no demand for multichannel TV in the UK, and that there is no demand for 24-hour news channels in the UK -- yet all three now exist and no gives them a second thought.

I would argue that television is a more globalized business than you give it credit for, and that international experiences are a valid point of reference. Of course, what works elsewhere may end up not working in the UK, but you can't really be sure of that before you test it on the British market.

Because we already have local TV - in the form of the BBC and ITV regions. And they struggle to fill 7 hours of local content a week, despite being funded by two of the biggest broadcasters on the planet. If the demand for more local content was there, the BBC and ITV would both be going after it, creating many more sub-regions, not trying to close them down and cut their hours.

The fact that when the government launched this idea that the best reason they could come up with to support it was "if Birmingham Alabama can have a local TV station, should should Birmingham UK" shows how little interest there was from the public in the idea. It's an idea, foisted on the public, by an unpopular politician, that nobody wants, and nobody wants to pay for. Which we all have to do - it's not like these are completely commercial entities which rely on viewers to make any money.



Likewise, you can't simply take an idea which works in a foreign environment and expect it to work in the UK without taking into account how it will fit in with the existing situation.

Besides, we've tested local TV before. It failed then, and it's already failing again.

Said it here before,that the model could be resolved with the concept of a sustaining service with fixed opt-out slots and a schedule so engineered to offer additional opt-outs where needed. The smaller local stations could opt for 3 hours a day and be part of a group for scalar economies. The larger ones taking more opts for their purposes but still paying an element of the smaller stations fee for the unused sustaining programming.

A bit like ITV used to be then ?

It's too easy to say local tv is a dud. Yes London Live has been nothing short of a disaster and the Birmingham licencee didn't even launch before going bust, but we have seen positive reactions from STV Glasgow and Notts TV.

I don't think most of the smaller licences will work, but if Ofcom bring in the right bidders, which they didn't do in London, there's a good chance it'll still be here in some form or another, even if the 'local' area increases as we've seen with commercial radio stations.

Almost, but the local station would always have priority over the sustaining service. The operators need something to hang their offerings on. They'd operate in parallel to one another.

Yes - but there is the bizarre ATSC system that allows digital stations to use their old analogue frequency as their new LCN-or-equivalent isn't there? Plus the .1, .2 sub-channel system that the US has that is almost unseen elsewhere.

This whole "old analog channel as digital LCN" also happens in countries with ISDB-based systems, such as Japan (where the system was originally developed) and here in Brazil (where enhancements to the system were added). In fact, here in Brazil, subchannels do exist, though only public-service channels are allowed to use them.
For example, many cities (such as here in São Paulo) have multiplexes for the legislative and judicial powers.
Here in São Paulo, the legislative mux (digital-only, on RF channel and LCN 61) carries:
61.1 - TV Câmara, the channel for the federal Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of our Congress).
61.2 - TV Senado, covering the Senate.
61.3 - TV ALESP, covering the Legislative Assembly of the state of São Paulo (each state, and the Federal District, has their own single-chamber parliament).
61.4 - TV Câmara São Paulo, covering the Municipal Chamber of the city of São Paulo.

Pretty much. Like I said, one or two of the regions were a bit large but otherwise, I think it worked well, for the most part.

In many ways America is the worst example to use for local tv. For a time I lived in various southern states, when I was in Florida all the Local News seemed to concentrate on was a local shooting or two and what sex offender had moved into the area. Stations that would only serve 1 or 2 million had a shooting a night to cover or indeed the always popular Suicide by Cop, which seemed to happen once a week. We should be grateful this part of the world has far less news like that.

Unfortunately, that's the way things are these days. Faced with fragmenting audiences from excessive local competition, many stations have discovered that random crime and fluff is the cheapest way to fill their newscasts, and in many cities, local TV isn't much more than a joke.

It doesn't have to be this way, however. Decades ago, many American stations were putting out a local news product that was the best of its kind in the world. Some still produce worthwhile local news today.

Here's an example of a high-quality American newscast from the 1980s, showing just how good local TV can be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKZEsRX_aB4