Evening Standard Bid wins London Local Licence

It is indeed very interesting that the Evening Standard should win this bid.

Does anyone else remember the old cable channel "Channel One" (the news based channel, not what Virgin 1 became!)? They were owned by Associated Newspapers, who until 2009, also owned the Evening Standard!

You would think they would try and give the News at different times...I too don't see the point in challenging the BBC and ITV's London News. Guess we shall see though.

I do get fed up with the constant negativity surrounding the Local TV idea - it'll be cheap, full of padding, repeated constantly, etc etc. Some of it will be ****, undoubtedly, but there are some fantastically creative and enthusiastic people out there who have the potential to do something very good if they are given the chance. Just because ITV churn out their moans that regional TV is expensive and the only way to survive is to cut everything to the bone, doesn't mean it is necessarily the case. These new local stations will do well if people embrace them.

It appears London Live have an agreement with Global Radio's LBC to share content.

http://www.a516digital.com/2013/02/london-local-tv-operator-announced.html#more

Edit:

The Independent, IoS and the Evening Standard will move to the same floor, along with a tv studio for London Live.

http://order-order.com/2013/02/12/exclusive-independent-to-go-to-seven-day-operation/

The memo given to Independent and Standard staff invites job applications from existing staff for London Live posts.

http://order-order.com/2013/02/12/read-the-full-memo-to-standard-and-indy-staff-on-restructure/

Just like what Sanoma group in Finland did with their news operations late last year.

I think the Local TV stations can do well given the right market conditions. I think the London station will do well as there is a market for it (millions) and they already seem to be pulling in some potentially interesting talent and content.

However I'm sure there will be areas that Local TV stations won't work...that's why the BBC and ITV's limited Regional services must continue or even be enhanced (ITV I'm looking at you). I suspect there's many people like me who may want to know what's happening locally and Regionally...just as people watch Regional and National News now.

OT: The Sanoma deal went even further earlier in mid-January: all radio stations owned by the group (Rock, Metro, Groove, Suomipop, Aalto) moved their news operations to Sanomatalo. All the news output on those channels is now co-branded with red-top paper Ilta-Sanomat and is hosted by Irish-born anchorwoman & professional skydiver Faye Lawson.

Considering Local TV is generally concentrating on breakfast and evening news content and ITV are weak at breakfast and always moaning about their regional burdens I do wonder if a bit of joined up thinking could have led to an affiliate system where ITV retain control of Channel 3, but with specific regional slots (a shorter Breakfast slot, say 6-8am, the standard news slots and then 30-60 minutes of non-news programming a week) put out to tender.

Although obviously Local TV was very much a top down idea from Jeremy Hunt it does seem odd that this and the renewal of ITV franchises seem to have been treated by OFCOM completely independently of each other when it is arguable to make both local TV (however local that may be) and ITV work in the future they needed to be considered as part of the same problem.