For local TV to work, there needs to be the demand for it, and at present, the only people wanting it are government luvvies and media barons.
This country is not big enough for the American system to work.
I don't really buy the size argument. It's not really a size dependent system. The ITV system was essentially just a larger version of it in a smaller country with some obvious differences, of course. The reason TV developed differently over there was due to cultural/political and not necessarily geographic reasons which resulted in a 'bottom up' approach rather than a centralised strategy.
As for local TV and there being no demand, I'm sure it depends on what the programmes are. For a start, local TV isn't a genre in itself and ultimately falls into the same categories as nationwide or networked TV - news, soap, sport, drama etc. Surely people would watch good local TV and not bad local TV. Of course, what's good and what's bad is ultimately determined by personal taste.
Naturally, you could argue that most genres are adequately catered for by London-based nationwide output and I would say that's true for the most part, with local news provision being the main need for any local or regional TV service. That said, it should be remembered that Coronation Street and Emmerdale are ITV's two staple programmes that it arranges its prime time schedules around and that these programmes are a product of the old regional network system. I'm quite confident that if ITV was a London-based UK-wide channel from Day One, then neither of these shows would exist, nor anything like them.
Last edited by Mr Kite on 11 January 2013 8:00pm