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LL
London Lite Founding member
Jon posted:
Bic Basher posted:
All about the McKenzies. What a good comedy, the type of sitcom C4 would have commissioned 20 years ago.

Not sure if that's meant to be praise or not. But considering it's nearly 20 years since Father Ted I'm going to assume it's good.


Yes, C4 used to commission strong black comedy, such as Desmonds. At home with the McKenzies was LL's first commission.

Out of the original commissions, this and Food Junkies have been worth watching.
MA
Markymark
WW Update posted:
Markymark posted:
WW Update posted:

We live in a globalized world, so to dismiss other countries' experiences outright makes no sense. After all, there were people who claimed that multichannel TV would never work in the UK.


Where's the evidence that it actually does, and how do you evaluate that ? Many would say they watch no more (or less) TV than 20 years ago, it's just harder to find what they want to watch, and it often requires a payment. Not sure that's progress ?


There's plenty of evidence that multichannel TV works in the UK, just as it works in every other developed country. BSkyB is a hugely successful company, and plenty of Freeview channels make money from advertising. If there wasn't a market for multichannel TV, it wouldn't survive as a business model. (The total amount of time spent in front of TV is irrelevant, because the viewing is now far more fragmented.)


Yes, that's all super, it certainly has made a lot of money for BSkyB in particular, but I'm still not certain
how that benefits the punter at home ? Unless he's a BSkyB shareholder of course.
WW
WW Update
Markymark posted:
WW Update posted:
Markymark posted:
WW Update posted:

We live in a globalized world, so to dismiss other countries' experiences outright makes no sense. After all, there were people who claimed that multichannel TV would never work in the UK.


Where's the evidence that it actually does, and how do you evaluate that ? Many would say they watch no more (or less) TV than 20 years ago, it's just harder to find what they want to watch, and it often requires a payment. Not sure that's progress ?


There's plenty of evidence that multichannel TV works in the UK, just as it works in every other developed country. BSkyB is a hugely successful company, and plenty of Freeview channels make money from advertising. If there wasn't a market for multichannel TV, it wouldn't survive as a business model. (The total amount of time spent in front of TV is irrelevant, because the viewing is now far more fragmented.)


Yes, that's all super, it certainly has made a lot of money for BSkyB in particular, but I'm still not certain
how that benefits the punter at home ? Unless he's a BSkyB shareholder of course.


If the punter at home (or at least enough punters at home) didn't subscribe to BSkyB, the company wouldn't be profitable. If the punter at home didn't watch Freeview channels, they wouldn't be able to sell enough advertising, and they would fail.

In other words, those who predicted that multichannel TV wouldn't work in the UK were wrong. It works pretty much everywhere, because there is a demonstrable market for it.
MA
Markymark
WW Update posted:
Markymark posted:
WW Update posted:
Markymark posted:
WW Update posted:

We live in a globalized world, so to dismiss other countries' experiences outright makes no sense. After all, there were people who claimed that multichannel TV would never work in the UK.


Where's the evidence that it actually does, and how do you evaluate that ? Many would say they watch no more (or less) TV than 20 years ago, it's just harder to find what they want to watch, and it often requires a payment. Not sure that's progress ?


There's plenty of evidence that multichannel TV works in the UK, just as it works in every other developed country. BSkyB is a hugely successful company, and plenty of Freeview channels make money from advertising. If there wasn't a market for multichannel TV, it wouldn't survive as a business model. (The total amount of time spent in front of TV is irrelevant, because the viewing is now far more fragmented.)


Yes, that's all super, it certainly has made a lot of money for BSkyB in particular, but I'm still not certain
how that benefits the punter at home ? Unless he's a BSkyB shareholder of course.


If the punter at home (or at least enough punters at home) didn't subscribe to BSkyB, the company wouldn't be profitable. If the punter at home didn't watch Freeview channels, they wouldn't be able to sell enough advertising, and they would fail.

In other words, those who predicted that multichannel TV wouldn't work in the UK were wrong. It works pretty much everywhere, because there is a demonstrable market for it.


You're looking at this from just a business perspective. As I say, the amount of TV consumed has not increased
significantly as a result of multichannel TV. Furthermore, you could argue that regional broadcasting in the commercial sector (once highly regarded, and immensely popular) has been all but decimated.

Most folk I know, myself included, still only watch four or five regular channels, and two or three of those
were around 30 years ago.

I thought TV was all about entertaining, informing, and educating the public, rather than making pots of money ? I'm afraid 'success' has more than one metric.
LL
London Lite Founding member
London Live's City bulletin, presented by Evening Standard journalist Lucy Tobin.

SE
seamus
I feel like the autocue might not be set correctly because her strange eye contact is somewhat disconcerting.
OM
Omnipresent
WW Update posted:
We live in a globalized world, so to dismiss other countries' experiences outright makes no sense. After all, there were people who claimed that multichannel TV would never work in the UK.


True, but there were a lot of failures in the early years of multi-channel TV. And one the early lessons from the 1990s was that viewers did not take to overtly low budget television such as the original commissions on channels like Granada Breeze, UK Living etc.

Audience expectations of production values are high and if London Live is to succeed its news needs to be if a comparable quality to Sky and the BBC. The audience will not be forgiving of low production values.
WW
WW Update
Markymark posted:

I thought TV was all about entertaining, informing, and educating the public, rather than making pots of money ? I'm afraid 'success' has more than one metric.


Well, public service broadcasting is all about entertaining, informing, and educating the public. Multichannel TV, on the other hand, is not a PSB medium -- it's a market-based commercial operation, like any other media industry, and its success or failure can therefore best be assessed by whether it survives on the market -- much like you would judge the success of a newspaper by how much of its target audience it's able to reach and whether it can stay in business. Based on all evidence, there is a substantial market for multichannel TV in the UK (both pay and free-to-air), and most observers would therefore consider it a success. The purpose of multichannel television was never to increase the amount of time people spend watching TV.

Markymark posted:
Most folk I know, myself included, still only watch four or five regular channels, and two or three of those
were around 30 years ago.


Based on 2012 data, the four channels that were around 30 years ago together attract around 47% of the audience. That's not a bad number for just four channels, but it also means that more than half of the population watches something else most of the time (and that's why multichannel TV is able to support itself). The TV landscape has changed dramatically since 1984.
London Lite, Rijowhi and Jon gave kudos
DO
dosxuk
WW Update posted:
Based on 2012 data, the four channels that were around 30 years ago together attract around 47% of the audience. That's not a bad number for just four channels, but it also means that more than half of the population watches something else most of the time (and that's why multichannel TV is able to support itself). The TV landscape has changed dramatically since 1984.


I would suspect a significant quantity of the remaining 53% is taken up by a small number of channels - primarily Sports and News, and those from the BBC / ITV / C4.
WW
WW Update
dosxuk posted:
WW Update posted:
Based on 2012 data, the four channels that were around 30 years ago together attract around 47% of the audience. That's not a bad number for just four channels, but it also means that more than half of the population watches something else most of the time (and that's why multichannel TV is able to support itself). The TV landscape has changed dramatically since 1984.


I would suspect a significant quantity of the remaining 53% is taken up by a small number of channels - primarily Sports and News, and those from the BBC / ITV / C4.


But the fact that so many channels remain viable suggests that most get enough viewers to support their business models.
RI
Rijowhi
How weird but both Markymark and WW Update are right. As WW Update stated it's the PSB channels that is here to inform and educate. The other channels are simply to make money, if there is some education within that then that's a bonus. Kudos to both.

That London Live bulletin was awful, I agree with most that Mustard TV's offering of News seems far better from what little I've seen.
London Lite and WW Update gave kudos
MO
Mouseboy33
From Forbes Magazine:
"If London Live is to succeed, my guess is that it will need to learn a few lessons from Eyewitness News, beyond just the pure fact of localness. American local TV news is warm, folksy, inclusive. It focuses, with a lot of time and budget, on the things that ordinary people want to know about – not least, the traffic and the weather. It speaks to people with mortgages to pay and kids to get to school – not to hipsters who are obsessed with the newest club opening. Those proudly ordinary people are the people who might, if it’s any good, also watch local TV in the UK – and who are crucial to the success of London Live."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilmidgley/2014/03/31/does-london-need-eyewitness-news/

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