The main villains in all of this have of course now moved on. Kirkman is the only one left (for now). He wrote the winning application then stood by as Hatfield, Mote, Boseley and Cook came in and moved the goalposts, hired the wrong presenters, commissioned the wrong programmes and completely ignored proper news for the best part of a year! It was mid-life crisis TV.
Now the money's gone, the audience can't be found, the owner's got bored and London has no decent local tv.
Ironically, they now have the right presenters on news (with the exception of Baffoe) and yet while they have the mainstream news format, it does feel as if they're only doing it to fulfil the 5.5 hours of news Kirkman wrote as part of the original application which won them the licence in the first place.
Beauty contest style winning applications may work for commercial radio, but not for local tv.
Also ironic is the fact that The Standard is a commuter paper, yet London Live broadcasts the majority of its news at times when commuters are not available to watch.
It might be better for them to abandon the 8.30am show and run an 8.30pm newscast instead?
I really do think a similar approach to what C5 had initially would be best for these channels and concentrating on shorter hourly updates with perhaps a half hour bulletin in the evening if they've got the resources to do it. It might mean they need a newsreader on air for slightly longer hours but updates throughout the day should be much more manageable (and arguably provide a better service) than poorly resourced longer bulletins.
I really do think a similar approach to what C5 had initially would be best for these channels and concentrating on shorter hourly updates with perhaps a half hour bulletin in the evening if they've got the resources to do it. It might mean they need a newsreader on air for slightly longer hours but updates throughout the day should be much more manageable (and arguably provide a better service) than poorly resourced longer bulletins.
Maybe this should have been in the planning so that the seperate companies added in a few hours of regional content and could then club together for some programmes to be shared across the network of local TV channels. Add in a few minutes of an update at the top of the hour and their own identity. You keep it local whilst keeping the costs down. In essence the old ITV model on a micro scale.
I really do think a similar approach to what C5 had initially would be best for these channels and concentrating on shorter hourly updates with perhaps a half hour bulletin in the evening if they've got the resources to do it. It might mean they need a newsreader on air for slightly longer hours but updates throughout the day should be much more manageable (and arguably provide a better service) than poorly resourced longer bulletins.
Maybe this should have been in the planning so that the seperate companies added in a few hours of regional content and could then club together for some programmes to be shared across the network of local TV channels. Add in a few minutes of an update at the top of the hour and their own identity. You keep it local whilst keeping the costs down. In essence the old ITV model on a micro scale.
We'd probably end up with Land Rovers Live and Cuppa TV in London.
Ah, but we'd have sweet revenge by offering hours and hours of Louise Scodie hosting Not the one Show again, and there's always PJ's Fashion Forecast! A fair swap I'd say.
Back to this evening's output, Live from London: Field Day consisted of one (pre-rec) performance while Stefan Levy and Kristy Harper (an internet radio and tv presenter) co-presented with natural chemistry between the two. Kristy mainly interviewed artists, some of which were pre-rec from Saturday, while Stefan was with the attendees. An improvement on Alison Earle and Kevin Powder's Goat Race show, yet did come over a bit too young for LL's demographic.
I didn't watch the We are Festival coverage, so can't comment.
Back to this evening's output, Live from London: Field Day consisted of one (pre-rec) performance while Stefan Levy and Kristy Harper (an internet radio and tv presenter) co-presented with natural chemistry between the two. Kristy mainly interviewed artists, some of which were pre-rec from Saturday, while Stefan was with the attendees. An improvement on Alison Earle and Kevin Powder's Goat Race show, yet did come over a bit too young for LL's demographic.
I didn't watch the We are Festival coverage, so can't comment.
Glad it was an improvement but it is so at odds with the rest of the output and I think this is a problem with the output. It simply isn't clear at all who it is aimed at. Schizophrenic.
I've noticed they do that quite a lot at the weekend too - with Sunday effectively a repeat of Saturday. The weekends are also often padded with features from London Go and What to Watch..
I've noticed they do that quite a lot at the weekend too - with Sunday effectively a repeat of Saturday. The weekends are also often padded with features from London Go and What to Watch..
Oh dear. That's pretty poor. Previously stuff was fresh pretty much every day. Well, I guess if you lay people off (and others walk) then you don't have anyone to make content. Great plan London Live. Got any other bright ideas?