London Live

US-style isn't just within the US. Arguing the semantics doesn't negate the point.

And please, don't try and cast aspersions about the supposed insularity of people who disagree with you, least of all me. As someone who can speak and understand Italian and Spanish, and basic French, I've watched plenty of news from outside the UK. Add that to the fact I'm a member of TV Forum means that I've sampled lots of news from lots of countries.

To be fair, you were the one who framed this debate as non-UK members debating against UK members -- as if that were relevant to the arguments that have been put forward. I certainly don't expect you to agree with me -- in fact, I usually find disagreements in forum debates to be enlightening --, but I am somewhat annoyed at your suggestion that international comparisons simply shouldn't be made. You may reject the reasoning behind them, of course, but to dismiss them as a matter of principle does strike me as insular, especially in our globalized age.

London Lite and Steve in Pudsey, for instance, managed to disagree with me without making their disagreement personal.

It does seem todays discussion is pretty much the same as it was 5 years or so ago when the plans were first announced, and the problem back then was far too much looking at the US model and not looking at Europe especially which had closer parallels to our market with national and regional set ups and a strong public service broadcaster.

For what it's worth I don't think rolling news throughout the day is the way to go but I do think it should be there at the key times - breakfast, early evening and late at night, plus probably weekend mornings (or lunchtimes) and evenings. London Live's latest schedule revamp is nearly there - not perfect but it's progress. It's just they haven't got the news resources to back it up at the moment.

The big difference with the US is simply investment - even the small independent US networks realise they have to spend money to even have a chance of making money, but the UK attitude is just all about not spending much in order to limit losses. Competiiton locally of course is also key, yet here it's none existent. Even in London I doubt ITV London and London Live really see themselves as competition for each other.

There isn't even the incentive too either. The channel is owned by a company that has a monopoly on free local evening newspapers, takes copy of interviews from LBC radio (not initially mind) who also has a cosy relationship with said newspaper.

So bar BBC and ITV, you have LBC, the Standard and it's tv channel not really competing.

I never said that international comparisons shouldn't be made. All I object to is the same old arguments being trotted out again and again, and the smug tone that often accompanies it.

I'd rather make it personal than be snide.

Well said....

I'm not advocating a rolling news service - it's been tried before and didn't work. By news in volume I mean regular updates/programmes across the day with other general entertainment shows in between. My suggestion above was 5.5 hours of news, 1 hour of current Affairs and half an hour of local entertainment each weekday. The latter 2 could be repeated, bringing the weekday average to 9 or 10 hours each weekday.

Research done before local TV arrived suggested that a basic news service producing local output 3 hours per day could do so on an hourly budget of around £800 vs acquired entertainment programming of similar quality to existing digital satellite channels costing £1500 per hour.

Incidentally Channel Zero didn't bid for a London Licence.

I think there's scope for a much more fleet of foot low-cost local news service.

Channel One's VJs on motorbikes were ahead of their time - but if you had a handful of VJs out on the road each day working like that, zooming from story to story, you could gather a lot of content and have a much pacier style than London Live News which is a bit slow and plodding.

These days you can do some quite impressive stuff in the field with just an iPhone.

I'd certainly be prepared to accept a technical quality tradeoff if the news was first, fast, pacy and covering stories not reported elsewhere.

That's somewhat ironic, since some of the most snide comments on here have been directed at the forum's American members (and American TV audiences in general).

SuperDave has mentioned previously about the poor use of the live reporters for pre-arranged lives from arts/culture events. The survey I did recently asked if I wanted more coverage of those events which I didn't tick.

Like the gay pub story which the main broadcasters didn't cover, this is where LL should be covering, those small but significant stories.

Any racism should be reported to the administrator.

In fact you could do a lot with the Standard's journalists. It's common these days for local newspaper journalists to be expected to shoot some video for the paper's website.

A few simple static wide shots to play while the newsreader reads a script adapted from the newspaper article would be perfectly adequate for some stories, that kind of presentation is a staple of BBC regional news for things that are lower down the running order.