London Live

I doubt they met those commitments at weekends regarding news and current affairs after 14 to 1 and Platform 8 were axed.

There is the tokenistic Local London with Vanessa Baffoe on a Saturday which is pre-recorded. 30 mins long.

Incidentally, who provided the best coverage of the Aylesbury Estate occupation? RT UK!

How long were the licences awarded for?

I suspect even if they dropped news and local programming entirely OFCOM would be quite reluctant to actually withdraw the licence without having an alternative lined up to go. Could they force them to sell the licence though?

The licence is for 12 years.

If Big Centre TV do the impossible and provide a decent news service at the end of the month, despite buying a licence from a company that went bust with a very short window to get everything ready before launch, this will cement the disaster that has been LL who had longer to launch.

Wow that is truly messed. London, a "24 hour" city with millions of people and London Live couldnt have gotten it more wrong. LOL. If you look at all the global cities its such an odd situation for London. Why would LL think that starting a "breakfast" programme at 8am or later a good idea? Heck I dont think starting at 7:00 is early enough. They never tried to be a source of news for LONDON. If the national channels (news channels aside) dont start their breakfast programmes until 7:00, beat em, start at 6am or heck 5:30. They should be up to the minute the minute you'r up. BUT instead the "news department" was asleep at the wheel. The "news department" is truly laughable. Global cities such as Toronto for example start their main local broadcasts at 5:30 or in NYC 4:30am. WABC/WNBC/WCBS/WNYW are all broadcasting at 4:30am. Also LondonLive spectacularly failed in delivering actual information. Delivering a robust traffic/travel/news/weather app should have been created for the launch. Being THE GO TO source for news and information. Instead they tried to be a conversational/interview source. Ehhh. The channel didnt make itself the information voice of LONDON, instead just a series of talking heads with people yammering endlessly in a brick walled cell. Truly a misguided vision trying to be the TIMEOUT LONDON tv channel. For a company that runs a NEWSPAPER....strike that SEVERAL NEWSPAPERS...they really dropped the ball. ESTV needs to have a seat. SEVERAL SEATS. Give the license back.

I didnt have a problem with the rest of schedule, for some odd reason people think that it should have been all local originals right from the jump. Ehhh . Realistically those programmes naturally will have a narrow interest and look like garbage (ie SheffieldLive) because money is spread so thin across too many productions. So why waste money producing too many originals programmes few people will watch and drain your limited resources. LL produced, IMO some good looking originals and tried to IMO commission waaaaay too many from the beginning. I would have been more conservative and used greater resources toward news and created several key originals sprinkled with the much-loved classics. It aint the BBC with its "essentially" guaranteed funding thru licensing fees, stop expecting local tv to create BBC standard programming..it aint gonna happen, otherwise you will be sadly dissappointed. I say invest the money where it will have broader appeal. NEWS. But they ruined the studio/news programming and failed to bring "eyes" to the channel to sample the other programming.. that, IMO caused everything else to suffer. If they did an initial large investment in NEWS/INFORMATION, any profits could have been ploughed into creating local originals. This was the formula Citytv found to be successful. Just sayin'.

But today (Feb 19th) is the day ?

The Chinatown event is on Sunday.

Just looked ahead at the schedules from Mon 2nd March and there appears to be a lot more news in other parts of the schedule so next week may be just a transition. Maybe a rebrand of the news offering is on the cards.

From 2nd March every news slot is now 'London Live News' (including Wake Up London)

0830-1000 London Live News

1200-1300 London Live News
1300-1400 London Live News

1730-1900 London Live News

So a redistribution of Wake Up London hours across other parts of the day, Evening Show etc. gone in favour of a single London Live News strand.

So credit where it is due if this comes about as it looks to be a positive step.

At a guess, the 1730-1900 segment will be 'The Evening News' moved to the 5.30-6pm daypart, moving it out of the way of the BBC/ITV newshour.

1300-1400 is almost certainly The Headline Interview rebranded.

I suppose the cut in news next week is to pilot the revamped lunchtime bulletin.

The Headline Interview is still there but at 11.30am, so it would appear to be in addition to that.

i think there's going to be a lot more repetition of news on these new programmes. More like the 'wheel' Sky News used to do.

I won't be surprised either if the bulletins are reduced to using two presenters. Breakfast and lunch using the same presenter for example, with the other on the 1730-1900 shift.

Goodbye Scodie?