Culture Secretary unveils plans for new national TV channel

Even if the local TV idea works (which I hope it does and brings something new to UK broadcasting), I'd still like to see ITV keep some form of regionality such as News and at least a hour of regional programming a week (maybe using the Government regions + London as a template). I'd also like to see the BBC reduce their regions to the same as government regions, which may allow local TV to thrive.

Anyway I'm repeating myself so here's hoping the next Broadcasting Act is a good one, I wait with little hope (to be honest). SAVE ITV'S REGIONALITY!!!

I simply cannot understand the mentality of closing (BBC Regions) something doing well as argued above, to halp out others, it results in a poorer service all around. It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned.

I like the idea of local stations in principle. I've always argued that network television was always better than standalone local TV as it made local stations more viable if they had a national network to rely on.

In an ideal world. broadcasting here would be similar to the US. My home town of Liverpool would have a license area where national networks would go through local TV stations. This would have to be done with all independent television though, not just one channel, for there to be a level playing field.

The problem is that we let our only network merge and ditch most local station output. Furthermore, when digital came, we went for quantity over quality. Most areas of the US only have around 5-8 local stations, max. If you want a channel dedicated to home improvements, you buy satellite & cable. Here, local stations will struggle because of the free-for-all single UK media market that's been created.

Oh and Government Office regions suck. They're large & artificial. I know what my local area is and it doesn't include Manchester or Lancaster and certainly not Windermere. Essentially the Radio Merseyside area is my area, a ring around Liverpool going from Southport, clock-wise to Wigan, Warrrington, Chester and parts of North East Wales.

I thought Glasgow at that time already had its own television channel - it was called Scottish Television.

DVB Cornwall, I have to say after reading your comment you could be right. Hopefully we can get a win-win situation with the BBC keeping it's regions, An increase in regions and programmes from ITV plc (especially a re-established split between the government regions of West and East Midlands) and maybe, just maybe local TV working...

Mr Kite, all versions of regions (governent regions, TV regions etc) are far from perfect, hence why we hope local TV does work...Fingers crossed.

I wonder if the 20 or so local TV companies may form some sort of network between themselves...

Which they have confirmed they aren't planning on doing

I'm not so sure about their viability. The previous TV 'RSL' stations failed but then they didn't have the backing that these ones will have. They're government backed, get a bit of license fee and have good EPG places.

I've not read the new document that thoroughly yet so don't know what the rules over the licenses are but the costs could be substantially reduced compared with their predecessors and peers. Combining a local station with a newspaper group and/or radio stations (the few that are still local) would reduce a lot of the admin costs and any news provision and AFAIK there's nothing to say the stations can't share programmes. Plus you can run a TV station from a high-end PC these days, the cost of actually outputting the thing could be fairly low.

However the areas set out for licenses are probably the thing that will scupper a station, there are some odd choices there and some areas would work better than others. I wonder if some can be combined? I can't imagine the likes of Haverfordwest and Camarthen or Telford and Shrewsbury could support stations by themselves for example, I could see them being combined

Yeah, I think some of the places on the map are a bit too small. I honestly think something along the lines of BBC local radio regions would work better. Haverfordwest & Camarthen would probably be under a Swansea-based TV region, whilst Shrewsbury & Telford would come under a region covering the whole of Shropshire.

I'm not up on the legalities of the proposed system, but as others have said the catchment areas are very small in many cases and I don't see how something so 'local' can be viable outside major cities/conurbations. In a vast country like the USA, where your nearest city neighbour may be a few hours drive away, then I can see the value of a TV station serving one city or town. That's not the case here, and if the stations are allowed to, they may start merging in order to survive, and if that was the case how long before we ended up with the situation getting out of hand. A 'regional' structure would be much more feasable, surely.

The areas would appear to be defined by what's technically possible to slot in, so it's a technical solution looking for a problem ! The UHF band is crammed full with the present six muxes (not helped by Ofcom flogging off a slice of spectrum) and many locations that are close to each other are using the same frequency, so that's why some service areas are small.

http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/localtv/downloads/ofcom-uk-local-tv-report-2011.pdf.

Personally, I can't see anything coming of it, commercial sector local radio is all but dead except in a few pockets of the UK, I think any future for local TV is best served via the web.

Scarborough's local radio station can only afford to keep going by broadcasting from central York studios of a much larger radio group and sharing programming. How can anyone afford to run a TV station for a small town is a good question.