London Live

Was London Live ever really a 'news' channel? It did everything it could to repackage the news hours as either a mix of long winded dull debates or the tripe that was Not the One Show.

The news now is purely a tick box affair to comply with Ofcom, while the rest of the channel is a cheap repeats channel on a par with True Entertainment or one of the multiple FTA repeat channels.

There is plenty of stuff going on in London they can report on. Fire, robbery, shootings etc. It might be in local news, but at 1, or 6 or 10. News channels report on stuff which is then shown again in national news.

There are much smaller places with a local US channel which do well. Cheap adverts about local shops included!

LL has never worked, maybe they can try again in 10 years if we still have TV channels.

i don't buy that argument - there's plenty of London stuff that doesn't make it onto the regional news, let alone national.

Its interesting when you compare BBC London and ITV London and Evening Standard websites. Its amazing what its not reported or under reported on each site. Shocking.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london
http://www.bbc.com/news/england/london
http://www.itv.com/news/london/

Sadly I don't think the Standard's current journalistic output is a credit to it's 189-year heritage.

But getting back to London Live - there is enough going on in this great city of ours to warrant a decent, relevant, professional local news service, even if it has to be sandwiched between repeats to get the punters in.

The launch backfired - as just about everyone on this forum said it would. The response was to cut staff to the bone and turn out dull, repetitive, overly-long programmes that appeal (and are marketed) to no-one.

I'm not understanding specifically what you mean by that. Crime, local politics, transportation, events, etc. are covered. Maybe London is quieter than most places compared to large US cities? Slow local political news day? Comparing those sites with websites covering larger Canadian cities, they're not too different.

Yeah, I realised after I said it that I was probably saying something stupid. Maybe there's a different appetite for stories then? I don't know if half of the stuff that makes the news on a local bulletin in America would go down well for us. Lots of fluff and sensationalism.

Thats what Im talking about. if you look at the 3 sites. Some are barely covering anything of substance and ES has quite a bit more than BBC and ITV. But none are depth. IMO a superficial overview. London isnt any quieter and than other city. It probably seems that way because there isnt an aggressive LOCAL "Fourth Estate" operation finding those stories that really matter to Londoners. So yeah it would probably seem to be quiet without much going on. Then after the fact your hear the ubiquitous: "They spent how much money what?" "How did that happen?" "Who approved that?"

I cant speak about hundreds of stations across North America, but contrary of popular belief, many stations do great investigative pieces. And many stations have built agressive investigative teams. Rather than just the parodied broadcast examples you see online.

For example:
Chicago Taxpayers still paying for closed schools.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/Taxpayers-Shell-Out-Millions-Every-Year-for-Dozens-of-Abandoned-School-Buildings-392652261.html

Undercover insurance fraud investigation in Toronto
http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=827243

Skyscraper developer pays funds into Mayors campaign fund
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/08/01/2-investigators-tower-project-beneficiaries-donate-thousands-to-emanuels-campaign-fund/

And and example of a story that doesnt have national importance, but is important locally for those affected. London certain has many of these stories likely arent getting local coverage I would imagine.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-alberta-childrens-hospital-breach-access-patient-information-1.3780691?cmp=rss


So its not all fluff as some assert. A city of 8.5 million isnt any "quieter" than any other major global city. Sorry to disagree, but there isnt a decent Local "Fourth Estate" to uncover stories such as these. Stories that arent just shootings and fires and assaults which London has it fair share of sadly like most major cities. But also good stories and uplifting stories and local consumer stories that would only effect Londoner and their paycheques.

This is it, really. There are some reasons for that, though - in major US cities, the buck stops with the mayor. London's responsibilities are divided between 32 boroughs (go on, name them all) as well as the mayor and the Westminster government.

This means that often, attention will default to covering stories in central London that simply wouldn't be covered elsewhere - you may have heard about the pub in Maida Vale that was illegally demolished, where Westminster Council ordered that it be rebuilt brick by brick. This got huge coverage. But exactly the same thing happened to a pub in Sydenham, in south London, a couple of years before - and it only had very local and trade coverage.

While governance is so fractured in London (and still subject to a lot of control from Westminster), I suspect London's city journalism will always be underwhelming.

There are loads of stories presented in North America (not just US), that aren't always political in nature that warrant in depth coverage as I stated. And Im familiar with the council/borough style government in the UK, we have councils as well. And as you seem to suggest or assume, not all political stories covered by local media in North America (Not just the US) are not stories in which a city mayor is involved. Some involve County Government, State Government and Federal Government. Locally, the water department, police, streets and sanitation, rubbish collection on and on.... loads of city functions that are run by the council or other entities.... These services answer to someone and just because the citizenry doenst know who answers to whom.... the Fourth Estate should. Someone is in charge and at the end of the day, citizens pay taxes for services and the Fourth Estate should hold them to task or seek to get an answer from the group or person, if they are being cheated or ripped-off. And just because 'Westminster' has some control they still have answer to the populace. Maybe thats why these entities get away with things is because no bothers to ask questions or investigate what they are doing? Ignorance isnt an excuse.

Toronto Council
http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.106714.1384515656!/httpImage/image._gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.
Chicago Council
http://www.bettergov.org/sites/default/files/assets/1/Slideshow/chicago-city_council.jpg

Completely agree that London Live has never been great at 'keeping them honest'. The fact that the first interview with the Mayor wasn't until months after they launched says it all.

I suspect that, with the decline of local newspapers and local radio in London, being a press officer at a London council is an easier job nowadays than it was a few years ago.

When you watch local news in a big US city, though, they're not always leading with things that affect thousands or millions of people as you might expect. They'll often go big on a personal story that will resonate with local people, as these kind of stories are most likely to be exclusives. There's a sense that there's lots of competition to unearth the best stories, which can only be a good thing.

There was a golden opportunity for the local channel to show Mayor's Question Time in full, instead of waiting for an airing on BBC Parliament at the weekend. Oh well, there's always the 2,000th repeat of London's Burning I suppose?