London Live

Part of me wonders if Ofcom is being pressured to wave through these hopeless license changes to avoid their owners throwing in the towel on the channel and the press having a field day over the catastrophic waste of licence fee money it was setting these channels up. Granted Liverpool and Birmingham both folded but they were quickly bought up by Made and weren't anywhere near as high profile as London Live. LL was very much the flagship channel of this project and I think it would be widely reported and an embarrassment for the government if it were to close.

They certainly seem pretty laissez-faire.

I see from that, in their decision, they directly address and dismiss the criticism that London Live's trying to use their EPG position to run, as far as possible, a general entertainment channel. Ofcom's logic on this front seems very black-and-white: as long as they produce a bit of current affairs content, those accusations are baseless. I disagree.

They've also batted away the complaints that London Live isn't complying with its existing commitments, saying there's a separate process for those. I hope someone takes them up on that. Astonishing that regulatory compliance isn't a pre-requisite for having requests like this granted.

Well LL are still using two presenters. Anthony Baxter at lunchtime and Alex Beard for the evening bulletin.

Incidentally this evening's bulletin is 90 minutes, rather than an hour, yet they're still an hour short of news.

London Go moves to 6.30pm on Wednesday from next week according to their own listings - not listed tomorrow as yet.

One thing they need to sort is a catchup service for their news. It's been saying 'coming soon' since they introduced their news service back in 2015.

What is incredible is that Ofcom went out to consultation in the belief that the changes requested by LL would alter the character of the service. Suddenly they no longer feel this way, despite the fact LL haven't budged an inch.

OFCOM were pretty much forced to hand out these licences against their better judgement and I suspect are now under pressure to ensure their survival at pretty much any cost.

As said many times before the London franchise should be the most viable of the lot - and if they want to be effectively a standard entertainment channel there is no reason the two need to be mutually exclusive - indeed perhaps the best chance of a viable service is for them to launch a national version on at least Sky/Cable with a London focused version in the local TV slots on all platforms.

There is a distinct lack of original new content but from next week Desmonds is out of the schedules which at least makes it look more current, with London Live News most days from 8.30-10, 12-2pm and 5-7pm.

If the news was spread out a bit more throughout the day the shedule would appear to have a much stronger London spine - even splitting the 5-7pm block into half-hour bulletins on the hour from 5pm through to 8pm would make it more distinctive, but it could do with local content in the back half hours too.

Is that the reason STV keeps on winning all the Local channels in Scotland?

Part of the problem is London Live only really do news, and they don't do that well. They also schedule it at times when not many people can watch.

A decent, pacy half hour bulletin, with sport, business and weather, broadcast at Midday, 5, 6, 8 and 10 on weekdays, plus a half hour entertainment magazine at 6.30 and another half hour lifestyle or entertainment show at 8.30 would fill their 3.5 hour weekday commitment to original programming.

Placing local programming at the heart of primetime should, I believe, be a condition of licence.

The entertainment magazine, lifestyle and entertainment programming could be repeated during daytime. Even the news could be repackaged for repeat showing overnight or early the following morning.

I am guessing they will 'bank' additional hours from special programmes like the Parade to flesh the requirement out so that it will all balance out eventually (regardless of quality)? It will enable them to trim a little here and there, add a little here and there while still meeting the absolute minimum.

Isn't that the original show's original spot? And don't hold your breath for that catch up service as it's not going to happen and they rarely even put anything of any consequence on their YouTube channel (mostly promos and clips of sessions with small numbers of views).

London Live got a smack on the wrist from Ofcom for broadcasting 4 episodes of Trigger Happy TV one Saturday morning between 6 and 8 am. The episodes in question had not been edited for pre-watershed transmission. At least one person saw them and promptly complained.

LL said sorry so no fine imposed.

I'd be worried if any children were watching London Live at any time of the day.

Or adult for that matter.