London Live

A bulletin between 7-10pm should have been a condition for all these local channels, or at least hourly updates through primetime as Superdave suggests. Most just offering a weaker resourced bulletin in the 6pm hour (or earlier) just renders local TV pointless.


BTW - different mediums I appreciate, and far more successful, but do we have any idea of the budget for LBC?

It was a condition of the licence - London Live's licence originally had news headlines every half hour - with 4.5 hours per day of first run news (increasing in the second year to 5.5). It has just been steadily relaxed as the licensee has failed to make any money, and convinced Ofcom to relax the conditions.

Absolutely. The half hourly headlines were ditched even before they came on air.


But local programming isn’t just news. Many on here are familiar with Citytv Toronto. In its heyday, they produced numerous half hour magazine shows on everything from Fashion and Movies to Music and Sex.

These shows were produced in the Citytv 'high energy' style and gave the station character and were made with repetition and international marketing in mind. I remember several were shown on Sky News in the early 90’s, and Channel M ran a few in their early days.




Even today - NYCTV New York runs inexpensive half hour shows on everything from cooking to iconic architecture. Beteve in Barcelona has similar shows on local history, the arts and local neighbourhoods. These shows define their stations and make them stand out.

Something similar would help LL meet its 1 hour primetime commitment and maybe also earn revenue.

I’m just saying a bit of imagination wouldn’t go a miss and right now London Live (and indeed the rest of the local tv 'network') is sadly lacking on this front.

To have imagination, one must have actual brains, and brains have been in very short supply in this whole project. From government to the broadcasters themselves, the whole local TV project has been lacking in imagination, in creativity and in anything resembling any form of cleverness. Outside of Notts TV, the most imaginative so far has been from Made TV with their use of short form programming. I actually like this idea a lot. But generally, most local TV I've seen has been awful, little substance, if any, and no style at all.

The Made approach is exactly the way to go.

It’s how Citytv do their news in Vancouver (and Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg). 2 hours a night at 6 and 11, 7 days a week, with a team of less than 10 in each city.

Is it me or is the London Live schedule page incomprehensible? https://www.londonlive.co.uk/schedule/

Currently coming up as a blank page for me.

It’s not so bad on mobile but the two column design on desktops is awful

And the timings are completely screwed up.

And they're certainly not the sort of programmes a "local" channel should be showing either.

Must have been updating the page - but on desktop, the new schedule page format is about as well thought out as the channel's local programme commitments...

Is there zero news now?

That’s right.