57 bids for new local tv licences

I can see what you mean but, now border has to compete with 500 crappy other channel or 23 on freeview, instead of having a near monopoly. ITV had a monopoly, but come the 90s it started losing it, and has lost nearly half its viewers.

Does ITV in a mid-sized region like, say, Anglia have fewer viewers than Border did in 1990?

Is it more expensive to make TV programmes than it was in 1990?

If the answer to either of these questions was yes, I'd see the point.

What defines a mid-sized region?

Well we can Cross ref with this: : http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weekly-top-programmes-overview

It really doesn't matter to the question.

A mid-sized region is simply a region that is not one of the largest, but also not one of the smallest.

Is that so difficult to comprehend?

OK, let's take that bit out. Does the ex-Anglia region pull in less viewers for ITV today than Border's did for ITV in 1990? Given that the Anglia region has, I believe, approximately 4 million viewers, and Border around 600,000.

Have ITV's viewing figures declined by 85%?

Oh, no I just meant population or area? Ad revenue?

Advertising revenue is a function of viewing figures.

Have ITV's viewing figures, and/or advertising revenues, reduced by 85%?

Well we can Cross ref with this: : http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weekly-top-programmes-overview

At the end of their existence they produced the basic service of local news, an hour a day at most.

Were their budgets that tiny? The cost of running the region isn't necessarily proportional to the size of the region or population. For a full service of regional news/programmes and local presentation there is a certain level whereby the cost doesn't get any less depending on the number of people watching - the fixed costs don't reduce down past a certain point.

However the income is dependant on the number of people in the area and Border had and still does have a very cheap ad rate. No, they didn't go bust but they slimmed down costs to the bare minimum and diversified - at the end they were a radio company that did local TV news. Before that they were operating in an era without digital channels, on demand and without Google and Facebook. If they had to provide a full regional service now they wouldn't survive.

That said, these local stations are very different propositions to a regional ITV station, they're not comparable


That's not really the point. Most ITV companies in their monopoly days probably wouldn't have done local content if they didn't have to.

If ITV theoretically had a micro region in, say London or Meridian, with exactly the same population as Border the rate would be much higher.

That's not the only factor. Audience demographics are far more of a factor than pure numbers.

The advertising industry has changed totally since the days of regional ITV companies. There the websites which can deliver an ad to a bigger and much more targeted audience than an ITV region could ever offer. The market for TV advertising is also much more fragmented, again there are channels that can offer far better demographic niches than ITV ever could.

Regional advertising is something that ITV still does, but with lower effectiveness because the general audience is lower. Plus the internet can do very local advertising, and despite all the mergers and centralisation there's still local radio providing airtime for the local car showroom etc.

Returning to local TV, that's the area where they could do well - with ultra-local advertising. That is if they have a compelling enough product, well publicised and offer something cost effective.

Some rough size (in households) statistics for a sample of ITV regions. I have a feeling these may be a few years old but they won't have changed massively...

Border - 317,000
Central - 3,900,000
Granada - 2,900,000
London - 5,000,000
Scottish - 1,600,000
Tyne Tees - 1,300,000
Westcountry - 794,000

Some US comparisions including their ranking (2011)...

1. New York - 7,387,810
2. Los Angeles - 5,569,780
3. Chicago - 3,493,480
4. Philadelphia - 2,993,370
5. Dallas-Fort Worth - 2,571,310
16. Miami-Fort Lauderdale - 1,583,800
21. St Louis - 1,253,920
38. West Palm Beach - 788,020
98. Charleston SC - 311,260
150. Albany GA - 151,620
210. Glendive - 4,180 (smallest)

If the Border TV region became an exclave of the United States, it would rank 98th largest region out of 211, just about putting it in the top half of the size ranking. If you swap Border with Granada; Granada would be round about 3rd or 4th largest in the country.

The big difference in the United States is that there are no nationwide TV stations. Local stations form networks, not too dissimilar to the old ITV. In the UK, instead of having a handful, rather than having a handful of regional stations, we have many national stations. This makes it difficult for local TV to get a foothold. It's not that there is no demand, just that it doesn't make commercial sense in the UK TV culture that we have developed. One other thing to note is that advertising breaks are a bit longer in the US, though I'm not sure how much difference this makes.

I personally think that the BBC local radio regions are a lot more relevent than the TV ones and would be a good yard stick, though transmitters, such as Winter Hill are clearly not designed for that.

Sadly, I don't think any government has ever thought it a priority. Indeed, ITV itself was only every franchised regionally so that no one company had a monopoly of TV advertising. I think the writing was on the wall when Channel 4 was created as a near national (bar Wales) TV station. It might have been interesting if it was also regional licenses, so that each ITV region had an equivelent rival. Perhaps in a parallel universe.