Local TV

These channels must be on borrowed time now given the state of the world. They aren't doing their job (have they ever?). Given government priorities will be changing significantly in the coming days, weeks and months - it must surely be time to bin them.

Can’t remember what it was called but the other day, there was a syndicated show that brought us highlights from local tv’s coverage of coronavirus (yes, really). Curiously the programme info described it as a “Channel 7 co-production” or something similar.

Did the duration stretch to more than a minute ?

Cardiff TV's remained pretty consistent throughout with daily news updates that cover the effect of the pandemic on local issues.

A few examples from recent days:





Considering I believe it's just a two person operation these days, they're not doing too badly.

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or not, but I can now receive two local tv channels. I'm in central Manchester but can receive Liverpool TV s well as That's TV.

That's TV seem to have dropped the "Manchester" tag, though it did feature in the opening titles of their "news" programme earlier this year, but as they have special coronavirus opening titles at the moment so don't know if it is temporary. Originally it was called "That's Manchester, Headline News", in January I noted it had changed to "That's TV, Manchester Headline News", but this week has been branded as just "That's TV, Headline News". breaks seem to be replaced with generic "government advice" slides.



They have also now an hour of 80's music video between 6pm and 7pm each night branded as "That's 80's" (which you can see the end of above). I'm not sure if this is related to coronavirus or not as they still have the usual "news" programme for two hours from 7pm. "That's 80's" does have news, weather and travel information on screen as well, though I'm sure the travel info would be more useful in the morning, rather than when you've just got home from work (in normal circumstances) - though some of the information is a bit dubious, not sure delays between Cardiff Central and Gloucester are too relevant to Manchester residents. I assume they are just taking a feed from all the train companies operating through Manchester Piccadilly.

Over on Liverpool TV, it comes across as significantly more professional than That's TV (nothing new there). They don't have studios and are continuing to present from around Liverpool and have COVID-19 updates - though in the example below the presenter hasn't managed to get herself in focus, but there appears to be plenty of people out for a walk in the park behind her. They've also done an add offering free adverts to local businesses and a special "thanks NHS" advert from the whole of the Local TV Ltd Group.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52228046

Generated 19 complaints apparently. Surprised London Live had that many viewers

19 seems appropriate.

People Hold On, at least Lisa Stansfield is local to Manchester. More local than Judge Judy is

Well again the viewpoint on Local Tv doesnt mean all the programming has to be 100% local. Because its not sustainable. Should the whole schedule be Judge Judy repeats? Certainly not. But populist programming will always be necessary and must be integral as part of any local channel schedule. Along with a mix of locally focused programming. That was one of the biggest mistakes from the beginning these channels made is that these local operators mistaken thought they could create and sustain a 100% local schedule its not financial feasible and is not necessarily popular, unless in the case of a Local 24 News channel, which only is financially viable in very large markets.

Judge Judy is on because it dirt cheap to get in - most of the programmes are years old - it's simply gawp TV like Jerry Springer. It has no benefit but can fill the schedule.
i really find it extraordinary that the regulator allowed somewhat dubious firm broadcasting rights. We've said numerously on this site that 'Local' TV in the US is not a model that works in the UK. If we could see why not the Regulator? Also are they still getting the BBC's money left over from the Digital switch-over years ago in exchange for stories sent to the local BBC service?

Looking at US comparisons has never been right but in the likes of Canada and France genuinely local channels have found success, but again in a different market.

The reason it doesn't work in the UK can be put down partly to the historic dominance of the BBC keeping commercial TV somewhat at bay, but more so the monopoly ITV had in regional markets which meant we've never really had thriving competition at a local level, and then when there was an opportunity to use the emergence of digital TV to add local competition to the market quite wrongly the conversation of the time somewhat bizarrely and without any justification was that viewers wouldn't care about local content in a digital TV world.

In hindsight maybe ITV pushed that argument not only to loosen the regulatory burden but to limit any thoughts of potential local rivals being enabled to launch at a time they faced new competition nationally.