Local TV

Funny how that's a Station backed by something bigger...STV, the Channel 3 franchise for Scotland. London Live could still potentially work too, if it found it's real audience. As I said last night you need something bigger to back you up if you're gonna stand a chance.

Another blow to my home City's proud Broadcasting heritage.

Thats the thing with STV, it had everything in place, studio, news, content... it even already had the STV local website ( which is doing the local TV concept but online) in place before this happened so all its done with the money, is built a set for the riverside show on the second floor? and hire a few more news people. For all we know the money was also used to upgrade the main STV news sets, since the Local TV news are using them aswell..........

STV will be after Aberdeen and would be a good bolt on for http://aberdeen.stv.tv/ If things go tits up STV could just merge the local operations back in the Main STV channel and still provide a better the service with out the channel.

No-one will buy it if they can't have it up and running in 3 months, surely?

Having deep pockets does work. Remember the days of Local TV on Cable TV, Local TV on L!VE TV, pretty much dire, I'm amazed that some of the channels lasted as long as they did, but they did have an audience somewhere, but the budgets were about 50p and they made about half an hour a week on loop in terms of the Cable channels.

For those who might not be aware, Manchester used to have a Local TV station called Channel M, which at it's peak was owned by the Guardian Media Group, which at that time (2005-9) still owned and had the resources of the Manchester Evening News and the Radio Stations that GMG owned, mainly Real and Smooth. They also had the backing of the Canadian giant CHUM who let Channel M use the 'CityTV' format.

The content of the channel at it's peak was News lead, there was News between 6-9am, 12-1pm, 5-7pm and 9-10pm, granted the majority of it was the same story over and over again, but with the exception of the odd half hour here and there it was near enough all live, and the coverage they did was just as good as the BBC or ITV. Granted the pace of the studio based News programmes were a bit slow, but they were watchable and did the job. Many of the presenters and reporters from the station have also appeared on BBC and ITV in the region.

All of the non-News content (again at the stations peak) was all locally made, the majority of the shows were either lifestyle, Frank Sidebottom, music and sport, the latter two being quite important to a city like Manchester, Anthony Wilson also fronted a music series that only lasted one episode, it was cut short due to his illness.

The channel was heavily promoted in the Manchester Evening News and got its listings published in the TV Guide each day. The reason why the channel ended up closing was that the Guardian had losses and wanted to sell up the MEN (which was sold to the Mirror Group) and the radio stations (sold to Global), basically no one wanted Channel M. By the time they got a Freeview slot in 2010 it was too late for any last chances.

I do believe that if they did get their Freeview slot earlier (although they were on Sky and Virgin at this point) and that the Guardian hadn't sold everything off the station would have been a success story for Local TV. I would like to think that Local TV can be a viable business, but it's going to need deep pockets and big names. I do believe that London Live will probably survive (sorry about the rhyming), as I do believe the STV stations, and major cities that aren't served that well by the BBC and ITV, Liverpool being a good example where I believe it will survive, but I guess only time will tell.

I remember Channel One Liverpool on cable, I think that was a rolling news channel, or at least news-led. However by the time we got digital cable around 2001 or 2002 it wasn't long before it closed down.

I actually enjoyed watching some of Channel M's programmes such as I Love Mcr, and then there was a property guide style programme which was good and Andy Crane was actually very watchable as the main news lead on the breakfast show - he should be more permanent at Granada for GR!

A big problem is we've kind of lost a generation of people who knew how to produce local non-news programming, and in a way also lost a generation of viewers who were happy to watch them.

Where regional programming does remain in England it's essentially regional variants of national ideas or a specific one-off. I suspect it's practically a decade since a BBC or ITV region in England commissioned and prodcued a series of their own to cater for viewers in that region rather than just comply to a national quota.

The Channel M News Congestion Charge Vote results broadcast was very good.

I've watched quite a few hours of Notts TV and, having also had the opportunity to watch London Live (albeit not recently), I thought I'd share a few observations about Notts TV:

Overall, I think the channel has got off to a very creditable start, and certainly benefits from having Nottingham Trent University (Nottingham has long been strong in student media) and the Nottingham Post as two of its backers.

The station produces half hour news bulletins daily and a 15 minute news round up at weekends which includes the days headlines and repeats of major stories throughout the week.

Generally, the presentation and reporting on the channel is very professional. The news reports are packaged to a good standard, certainly close to that you'd expect from the BBC and ITV. Indeed, I have no doubt some of the reporters will move on to other networks.

Technical glitches have been few and far between. The only technical issue is that sometimes location reports have a slightly "washed" look to the picture.

If I was to make one criticism editorially is that sometimes the channel lacks a "hard" news story to lead its nightly bulletins.

Indeed, no less than three of the news bulletins I have seen have led with stories on animal welfare issues. I'm not saying this isn't worthy of news coverage, but stories about how animals are kept cool in the summer, or residents disposing of unwanted pets is a bit soft for a lead story. This isn't always due to a lack of other stories. For example, a report on the day it was announced that the opening of the controversial expansion of the city's tram network was to be delayed came second to an animal welfare story.

Also, sometimes the channel is reliant on releases of surveys. For example, one bulletin led on increasing use of food banks in the country. Again, I'm not saying this is unimportant but as a story I felt it had less impact given this had been covered in national news bulletins some months before.

One other weakness I have seen a couple of times that illustrates the challenge of doing TV news is that you do need pictures to go with your story. For example, a story about a small scale protest in the city's central square lacked impact as there were no images to go with the story. This does also apply to other programming. For example, a discussion on the channel's football programme "The Boot Room" about the World Cup suffered from a lack of any images from the event to support the discussion.

The weather is an area where I think the channel could easily do better, as at the moment is restricted to a still caption for a three day forecast.

As I say, given how hard it is to launch a TV channel and all channels take a while to find their feet, I think it's got off to a very good start and is valuable addition to the city at a time when it is starting to experience something of a renaissance after being hit by the recession. There's been a big burst of both public and private sector activity over the last year or so and there are a lot of stories to tell.

There was also Liverpool L!VE (which didn't go down too well once the city cottoned on it was essentially run by Kelvin McKenzie), Birmingham L!VE, Edinburgh L!VE and Westminster L!VE. I think these were the only local L!VE stations to open but there were plans for about 10 more.





They used L!VE TV's programming (such as it was) as a backbone for the network, with regional programming on the hour, and regional advertising.

The original pre-launch incarnation of L!VE TV was as a local channel called 'London Live TV'. It then took over a cable channel called Wire TV, went national and became the L!VE TV we know now.

That's the only way these channels have a chance - and then it's only a slim chance. If they didn't want to go for a national link up I'd have at least based it on a regional set up so for example all of the Wales licences are linked together with a requirement for say an hour a day of content from each local opt.