London Live

So £3m spent on staff, £2.6m in revenue and a loss of over £6m, meaning around £6m spent on infrastructure, programme rights, non-staff programming costs and from the sounds of it servicing debt.

As others have said although the change to concentrating on archive programming very loosely connected to London might have increased ratings it hasn't increased the value of the channel IMO. It does seem highly unlikely now it would ever be bought up by an established broadcaster or production studio but you would think there could be significant financial savings to be made in partnering with either C4 or Viacom. Indeed I'd still see it as a good fit for Channel 4, especially now when there is pressure on them to move out of London. Providing a more PSB service especially for Londoners could be the thing that helps hold off any sale.

However in both cases they're just better waiting it out for London Live to go bust and hope to pick up the pieces.

Does all the news specifically have to be live? Or could they (or a potential buyer) get away with a 15/30-minute bulletin on loop?

Best thing for them to do is Euronews-style news,, where new/updated reports are dropped into a running order that repeats itself.

I dont mean to sound harsh....but that is the problem. Its because, the UK never had a local tv legacy like North America or other parts of the world and this is basically what local tv is. So I think the idea of what local commercial tv is skew or warped or the expectation is wrong. Community/Local/Cable Access is what is you see airing on most of the other UK Local channels currently and hardly anyone is watching and these channels arent profit driven because they are either funded by the communities they serve or a freebie from the cable company. The schedule you see attempted on London Live its hitting some numbers because thats what people frankly want to watch. Thats why those other channels arent yet successful commercial ventures becuse people simply dont watch loads of local productions enough to make the channels sustainable. Local commercial tv will always be repeats, movies, local news and a handful of local productions. In North America many stations also have first run sitcoms and other programming they purchase on the syndication market. I think the expectations that these stations were going to be something else than what they are and what they should be or what they need to be to continue to survive needs/has to change.

WGN does lots of news, produces loads of sports and does a couple of local interest broadcasts, the rest of the schedule talks shows, reruns and CW programming (for now). The key is to wrap everything you broadcast or produce in a veneer of the city you serve. WGN has been branded CHICAGO'S VERY OWN for decades and it works for them. They did this because all the other stations in the city are networked and they werent. That was /is their strength. They still used that tagline even whilst "affiliated" with the CW...for now. And when they go back to being 100% indie they likely wont see much of a viewership drop.

Here some examples of WGN tying everything they do to the city.
Local production promo

News Open

Sports Promo

Station promo

Here is a promo from the early 80s featuring local born soul singer Lou Rawls

Presenter promo

London Live was never given enough money. Bad studio, bad graphics, bad everything else....., was always going to fail.

The only thing it's useful for is the old vintage film, please pull the plug.

Disagree on the bad graphics and studio, it's still top tier. It's just bad management.

London Live has had £18m of investment in the last 2.5 years, far more than any of the others (probably as much as the others combined). I agree the management, particularly at launch, was way way way off the mark.

London Live has gone through two phases, the targeting of a non-existent hipster audience with 'news' being non-existent and now the cheap and cheerful C4/Ealing films phase with a wheel of news service that is tagged on to it.

The saving grace for LL is that it isn't the complete disaster that is Big Centre TV or That's TV.

Absolutely agree. There is some potential, but a lot of work still needs to be done if it's ever to make a mark on the local audience.

A relaunch is maybe the way forward - dropping London Live (which apart from 5.5 hours a day, it isn't!) in favour of ESTV perhaps?

Not harsh and I agree with you. My point is that compare the local element there and the local element here and they are worlds apart. NY1 is a good example too and they operate on tiny budgets for TV. Both WGN and NY1 sing about their local content and they have a presence in the city and advertise which is something that most of the UK local channels do not do. It's summer so I've been doing quite a bit of travelling to see family, work etc and in many cities that have local TV you would have no idea the channels existed and you certainly can't even get them in hotel rooms etc. Absolutely show reruns, that will get figures, but if you're local TV and promoting your area is a key part of your MO then make anything you create resonate or at least visable and worth watching. The ideas of a relaunch combined with bulletins etc being prerecorded and dropped in are both great, and I would have thought obvious, ideas and especially if they were combined. Even one every 60 minutes (where possible in the schedule) would allow them to be fresher and more reflective and have a one minute bulletin on the half hour. You could still have some a live lunch and evening show but it would be more focussed and likely more cost effective. They could also make much better use of social media channels to bring people in and promote the content they create.

Perhaps they should re-name to London Film House, broadcast nationally and in HD on the Sky sub, could be a film channel.

Would make more money but not sure if OFCOM would allow that or people would pay for it. They don't exactly watch in their droves when its free.