"It is hugely important that we provide the most update to date information to our viewers" most of whom are already at home...
"London is a dynamic cosmopolitan city which is home to over 8.5million people" who mostly don't watch us even when this would be relevant...
"It is hugely important that we provide the most update to date information to our viewers so that we can enable Londoners to plan or re-route their journeys if necessary particularly around major events around the capital" which we generally haven't done until now...
What happened to their plans for a traffic bulletin point in TFL HQ that they mentioned from time to time in the beginning, certainly in the industry at least. I can only imagine that they spent a lot of money on that so I am led to believe. Didn't they used to have a guy there doing stuff from time to time?
And I see from their Twitter feed that the awful old sofa is now in their "green room".
Imagine this is more about promoting London Live to Waze users.
Seems an odd move for a channel that effectively doesn't have a breakfast show, where traffic bulletins would be more of use to the 35% of Londoners who drive to work, and that doesn't really serve the 46% of Londoners who take public transport.
Anything that gives them access to traffic maps is an improvement on what they have now.
Mind you, I'm not really sure how much use this is all going to be to anyone when their news doesn't start until 8.30 in the morning and 6 in the evening. There can't be many commuters who don't hit the road until that late in the morning, and I'd hazard a guess that the number of people who watch London Live at work after 6pm before heading home is pretty much zero.
This kind of thing works well on US early-morning local news - and indeed on BBC Breakfast and Good Morning Britain - because it's on early enough to be useful. But, as things stand, London Live could have the fanciest travel updates in the world and they'd still be of no use to the vast majority of commuters because they're not on while people are getting ready to leave for work.
I do wonder if a rolling news-style service would work better than we have on London Live. Ditch the films, etc and as others have suggested have a selection of packages on loop with some live bulletins throughout the day. With some info always on the screen like weather, traffic (tube status?) and headlines it could be the sort of thing that goes on televisions in places like doctor's surgeries.
Anything that gives them access to traffic maps is an improvement on what they have now.
Mind you, I'm not really sure how much use this is all going to be to anyone when their news doesn't start until 8.30 in the morning and 6 in the evening. There can't be many commuters who don't hit the road until that late in the morning, and I'd hazard a guess that the number of people who watch London Live at work after 6pm before heading home is pretty much zero.
This kind of thing works well on US early-morning local news - and indeed on BBC Breakfast and Good Morning Britain - because it's on early enough to be useful. But, as things stand, London Live could have the fanciest travel updates in the world and they'd still be of no use to the vast majority of commuters because they're not on while people are getting ready to leave for work.
Agreed. That was the point I was trying to make but perhaps didn't do it very well. From what I saw recently their audiences don't generally coincide with their news output and are when traffic in town isn't bad anyway. I guess it could be to promote the channel within the Waze app but having it in the Standard, facing a captive audience, hasn't exactly worked so far.
When I'm driving around or through London I use my in car SatNav, not an app, and I even do that infrequently unless I'm doing something locally, as I like most others, use public transport.
For me, the most essential bit of travel information is absolutely the Tube status. True, it's the kind of thing I can easily check on my phone - but that's not part of my morning routine, so there have been several occasions when I've pitched up at my local Tube station to find chaos that I could have avoided by taking an alternative route.
To be fair, London Live do cover that off well - and it's always right at the top of their news programmes. But just not at a time of day that's any use to me.
I think an automated service at breakfast time, rotating public transport information with Waze traffic info is the way forward. I'd certainly flick over to that to see how things are looking, whereas I currently wouldn't touch London Live with a barge pole at that time of day.
I can't imagine they have many existing viewers that early in the day, so not much to lose - and it could even end up becoming a bit of a cult thing (like Birdsong on digital radio) if they did it really well, for example playing the sounds of the city (which could be crowd-sourced) in the background. A poorer alternative might be doing a bargain-basement deal with the newly-launched Thames Radio (a London DAB station that's actually run from Wales) to provide the soundtrack.
The problem is LL hasnt figured how to make the channel an "essential" information source for London. Of course there are apps and other radio stations for London, LBC, BBC London,etc. But had LL thought of wrapping their entertainment around a good travel/weather/news broadcasts at the right time, they might have made head-way.
For example, as I've suggested in the past, an early morning traffic/weather/news headlines program starting at 5:30 or earlier and rolling for several hours. Couple that with robust and heavily promoted weather/travel/news app on the Underground, the channel could have started on the right path.
The morning program they had was fluffy and woefully light on news (and sad since they had the ES to draw from) and travel segments not frequent and certainly not informative or robust for a city that survives on its public transport network. Find a former or current TFL employee to present it. They know the system and how it works and possible the best way to make connections if their is a jam or breakdown (CP24 did that in Toronto, they hired a highway patrolman to present their traffic. He was brilliant and informative).
The weather is a joke for a city that gets rain. Not sure what the government restrictions are, but maybe some years down the road, if the channel became successful, they could have installed a private commercially sponsored radar and streamed it live it to their app and for on air broadcast. That way people can look on the app to view live radar and see if they can pop down the shop to get to a pint of milk or wait a couple of minutes till the shower passes or if they are gonna get caught short without a umbrella in a few minutes. Should they go have a drink and wait or is the rain just going to carry on?
How about installing sponsored "beauty cams" across the city at certain vistas. Show people what is going on. Use them heavily and live between programmes and in place of idents. Show London they are connected with the city. Also they could prove to be valuable sources of video when breaking news happens. CP24 and CityTv has cameras on top of the many of the skyscrapers in Toronto and they take the video when there are fires and when other breaking stories happen. Cut a deal with TFL (or whomever)to use the JamCam network. Show people whats going on. Sponsor the heck outta everything allowed by law. Instead the spent money on covering the walls in fake brick that one would see behind the camera, creating a news studio they used rarely and buying that expensive robotic camera, who know what other money was needlessly spent. ITs hard to believe that was the only studio space they had available. Like a narrow corridor. The morning show should have been entirely presented from the news nook with the 2 big screens and the news room backdrop. It give their impressive that all those ES people are working hard to gather the latest imformation.
You have to think outside of what "everyone" has or is doing to make a mark and LL certainly hasnt done that at all.