London Live

Well I think we have an idea why Two Beards wants to sell off London Live, the Standard has reported a £10m loss.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-44537728

London Live TV channel in need of cash to stay afloat
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/07/07/london-live-tv-channel-need-cash-stay-afloat/

Guess it'll be up to a media giant like That's TV to save them then.

CBS could be interesting actually and a last throw of the dice. They provide the sustaining feed for Made though if CBS London took content from across their channels and could contract out the news CBS London might have a chance, but more importantly be a platform to launch CBS All Access which they're rolling out worldwide. Some local "London" content could also give them local "UK" content for their on demand service too.

From the Telegraph article :



'Onerous Ofcom' rules? They mean the programming commitments that they themselves made in order to be awarded the licence in a competitive tender and that have already been watered down multiple times ?

Yes Ofcom are being really strict with their 'onerous rules' when it comes to Local TV. I don't recall any of the Local TV bids offering a service comprised of Black & White films from the 1950's for 9 hours and a news bulletin on repeat for the other 15 hours a day (the That's TV model).

I don't think LL are still meeting their minimum hours for news anyway?

Two hours a day now, though seems to be 5-7pm weekdays, then an hour at noon and 6pm on weekends. Know it was reduced from the original 5.5 hours, which really was never going to be achieveable. Even when ITV had a monopoly they've never had to produce more than an hour of regional news a day - some of these channels were expected to do more in a day than the ITV regions (and indeed BBC regions) did in a week at peak regionalisation.

Straying into local TV more generally did notice today that Made TV have at least restored an hour of "local programming" in peak time at 8pm (on Made in Liverpool at least) rather than just looping the hour-long news programme for yet another hour. I assume it's all repeats now and at least half of it is networked content from other Made TV regions but at least they've got something back in the heart of primetime which isn't just poorly produced news content or a simulcast of CBS.

That's TV are not even listing the films any more.

08:00 - 17:00 on every That's TV channel is now 'That's Timeless' - Films and cartoons of yester-year.

You'd think an accurate EPG would be a condition of the licence. When do these licences run out BTW - let's give the space for these over to the phone companies, not the space used for HD channels!

London Live will be dead within the year, 18 months tops. Their coverage of London at the weekend, on one of the most monumental weekends in the Capital for years, was shameful. It's a folly, not a channel or a business. Anyone there is just doing it to pay the bills.

Don't know if anyone else has spotted this https://www.ibc.org/delivery/video-discussion-the-rise-of-video-and-the-role-of-telcos/2990.article Unless I'm very much mistaken that's the London Live studio isn't it?

IBC (big UK-run broadcast exhibition held in Amsterdam) is using the studio for some video discussions. I guess it isn't in use that much these days on-air...

It's the London Live studio. It's only used for a 2 hour news bulletin from 5-7pm weekdays, noon and 6pm weekends, plus London Film Club, which would give ample time for studio bookings during the day.