57 bids for new local tv licences

To be fair, you can't really judge a programme from it's synopsis. Especially one where the synopsis is probably the only thing that has been thought about so far. All these programmes sound rubbish too if you judge purely on the synopsis..

The original Channel 5 license application from a Thames TV led consortium in 1992ish was for a City TV style service based on the Canadian model

This whole business really puzzles me. This has been tried plenty of times before and it almost always fails doesn't it? What's different this time?

If Channel M couldn't survive in a densely populated city like Manchester, what chance have others got. A quick look here reveals a whole list of similar such stations that have now "ceased broadcasting". There are only 2 still running!

Believe me I'm totally behind the concept of it but how can any of these guys possibly hope to succeed with such a damning history?

Not just a damning history but a pitiful future. The promotional videos on these companies' websites are atrocious. They clearly have zero experience producing television of any discerning quality. You cannot produce watchable television on the cheap - and you cannot plough the necessary funding into tiny hyper-local services. It's doomed to failure by concept.

At a time when TV audiences are dwindling anyway, what makes any of these companies think people will tune in to watch woeful local musicians sing in a local bar, especially when the audio mix is abysmal with audible hum and distortion and clipping, the cameras are operated by students and are shaky, underexposed and the white-balance is off.

There are a couple of differences. Firstly there is financial support from the license fee/government.

Secondly being all-digital will benefit. The previous attempt at this had a big disadvantage in the way it was broadcast. They were all fairly weak analogue transmitters from odd sites, so the only people who watched were those who were in the small service area, had aerials pointing the correct direction and had been bothered to tune in their tellies (who rescanned their analogue TV regularly?). Being integrated with the DTT network and appearing on the EPG will be a big advantage.

So they KNOW it's financially untenable and so are squandering the licence fee on it. Utter madness.

Thanks Inspector, I agree that placement on DTT is going to be an advantage, however - and I don't want to be quite so down on the whole idea as other posters in this thread - I do have to share the concern that they are going to struggle to pull viewers in.

I watched a few of the videos, and I thought they were of varying quality. One of the Manchester applications (YourTV) was pretty amateurish and more significantly the content was very vague - a lot of people standing in the street saying what they think a local TV station should do but that's about it. One assumes there is more detail in the bid.

I don't really see how one can categorically say this isn't going to work. Local TV in Europe tends to be very hit-or-miss, but there are several stations have been broadcasting for several years. I don't think any of them generate a ton of revenue, but it seems enough to keep them on the air and broadcast som journalistic content.

If these local stations get strong signals and LCN8, they will have a large potential audience and may well turn a profit. The smaller areas will perhaps struggle, but I wouldn't give up on the metropolitan stations. If Paris can sustain no less that four local terrestrial channels, then London should be able to maintain at least one.

Where I am I have Almere TV which is predominantly text based but with actual programming at points duirng daytime and evening - but ahve noticed the number of actual programmes seems to rise year on year.

I also have FlevoTV which is for the whole province and is predominantly actual programmes with a varied mixed of genres.

But I believe the most successful of teh models has to be AT5 (Amsterdam) as that does have a varied schedule and people do watch the channel.

Yes, and shows The IBC Daily News 07:00 to 09:00hrs during Amsterdam's annual September broadcast technology show

The idea's good in principle but I also fear how it will turn out.

Being from Liverpool, it's always been a big insult to be the largest city in the country without its own ITV licence or BBC news operation. It's been key, I believe, to the city's generally misrepresentation to the rest of the UK, in terms of both image and profile. It's incredible some of the misinformed stuff I hear people say about Liverpool.

My problem with the model is that UK television is now a world of nationwide, quantity over quality, TV channels. Local TV thrives in the US because there is no concept of US-wide TV stations (on terrestrial). It is all local stations that make alliances/affiliations with each other, usually with a dominant 'key' station which produces most of the networked programming, such as the main newscast, which are usually based in New York. Here, London-based oragnisations can just get a license for the whole country. Also, there are a lot less channels in most regions of the US, which means there's more advertising revenue to go around. The UK audience is now very thinly spread across many channels, which I think already has compromised standards on the big companies such as ITV and then we have to take into account that TV has lost a lot of its pre-eminence to the internet.

I do think it can only work in a level playing field were all the stations are local and there's only a few of them. I can't see the US model being implemented though.

Erm...surely London (and even that includes surrounding areas) is the only city to have it's own BBC / ITV News operation. Other cities like Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Glasgow and Edinburgh may feature heavily in the regions they are within but none of the existing services cater exclusively for them. Liverpool isn't on its own.