Local TV

I've left the area now (no point in spending money on living there, given that university is now online) but it never used to be particularly good, even before Covid it felt like an amateur operation with the schedules rarely reflecting what appeared on screen. Looking at the schedules, they seem to have streamlined and simplified things a bit. If they've improved their output, that's a good thing.

They are bidding (with a couple of partners) for a local small-scale DAB radio multiplex, where they will be able to convert Sheffield Live radio to digital and broadcast stations from a number of partners (e.g. Forge student radio and Sheffield Live spin-offs). Given that they appear to have been able to sustain their TV service through very challenging times, you'd expect them to be a shoo-in for this new radio licence.

Just as well - London Live hasn't broadcast any news at all for nearly a year. The channel's (furloughed?) head of news now has a regular weekend daytime presenting slot on LBC News.

STV used to run their local TV stations as well, STV2. And they pulled out because they couldn't make it work. And this had the backing of an ITV company. If STV2 couldn't work with that amount of backing, it was almost certainly not going to work when the budget fell to 26p and a bus token.

Whose left then outside of the That's TV/Made network?

By my reckoning there is London Live, KMTV (Kent), Notts TV, Sheffield Live and I think one in Northern Ireland. Any more?

Notts TV doing their own version of Springwatch this week with a daily live wildlife programme.
https://nottstv.com/wollaton-watch-live-local-nature-programme-comes-to-notts-tv/

Latest TV Brighton?

I had totally forgotten that!
Shows how little attention it gets in London, despite the Evening Standard's promotion of the channel.

Let me get this straight. London Live the station for the capital, in Local TV’s biggest market and the one that is owned by London’s main newspaper, has not broadcast any news for almost 12 months? Yet even at its worst Thats TV and Made/Insert City Name TV even manages to get a news service out, as well as some of the other smaller stations.

That is embarrassing, especially as it’s serving one of the biggest and most important capital cities on this planet. There’s only so long you can use COVID as excuse for.

To be fair, it closed when BBC Scotland (channel) was announced.

Even before the COVID crisis, London Live was only managing an hour of original local content each weekday.

I believe that was the original vision (which obviously got changed) as I’m sure Hunt was talking about BBC/ITV eventually dropping some Regional services. If I remember right there was even talk of the National side of the channel having a budget bigger than Channel 5...😂.

I’m shocked someone hasn’t paid the 27p for the whole network yet. The 10 minute Local bulletin by one of the Local channels isn’t that bad an idea (especially if shown several times a day). If a company bought all the Local stations and produced some decent Quasi-National programmes (alongside Archived programming), you suddenly have an set up similar to Hunt’s original idea.

Local channels in Switzerland run a two hour loop of programming for 24 hours, which is updated at 6pm, such as Léman Bleu which include a news bulletin.

I know it’s been said time and time again but we would have been far better off with a national networked channel with local news opts.