Local TV

How this failed project wasn't put out of its misery absolutely ages ago is beyond me.

It's an utter scandal that these channels which have ultimately ended up with about 17 seconds worth of local/factual/news content per day are hogging prime EPG positions.

I recently switched to BT TV from Sky, so I’m able to watch Freeview again, having not had a working aerial for years up until a few weeks ago, so to my delight I was able to see Thats TV (Manchester) on Channel 7 very recently.

Well I can certainly now echo the comments on how crap the whole thing is. Hours and hours of music videos, The Jewellery Channel and 10 minutes of News each day. Really deserving of that prime Channel 7 slot...

The whole local TV thing is a trojan horse scheme to form a quasi national mux containing the so called 'support' channels, and it seems to have worked, with the help of licence fee derived money.

Was 2020 the last year of subsidies from the BBC? I assume they’ll all mysteriously disappear next year if so.

It ran out years ago:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/local_television/funding_arrangements.pdf - "The BBC’s funding will be available to the local multiplex licensee for the period from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2017. This is in line with current BBC Charter and revised BBC Agreement which comes into effect for this purpose on 1 April 2013. Although the local multiplex licensee will be expected to have in place plans that sustain the operation of the multiplex beyond 31 March 2017, no BBC funding will be allocated beyond this date."

There were two pots of money.
The above refers to the scheme for the multiplex operator Comux.

The second scheme, effectively cash for content, involved the local TV broadcaster getting three years of funding in return for material that could be used by the BBC, but they had to launch by 31st July 2017.

That does in fact mean that for the last to launch (e.g. York), the last licence fee money was paid out earlier this year.

So how much of this content did the BBC use in the end?

I don't think much was actually usable, especially toward the end of the scheme, when you just had the last of the That's TV channels contributing content.

But at the beginning, when there was sufficient content from channels who were able to produce something worthy, the BBC did run a programme called Digital Nation, which showcased reports from local channels on the iPlayer:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033gptv

Although I think that was more out of obligation than need.

There weren't enough packages to make it worth the BBC's while running this stuff. Even during the early and relatively cash-rich days of the Made TV channels, much of the news consisted of lengthy interviews with one person, simply because it required fewer resources to stick a camera in someone's face and let them prattle for five minutes than to produce an actual news package. It wasn't usable content - and that's without even getting into the endless, pointless vox-pops.

Now that these channels consist largely of simulcasts of unrelated channels, music videos and/or out-of-copyright films, surely it's time to pull the plug. Ofcom should just say that each channel's current licence is its last and let this thing quietly die.

I remember watching Channel M a lot on analogue when that channel was live. It was great - lots of reasonable-quality local news backed up by the local paper's newsroom, plenty of non-news programming including property shows, arts, concerts and comedy, and even the wonderful Frank Sidebottom test card. If these channels were like that channel, people might have watched.

Channel M was an example that proved Local TV could be done properly. But, they had a few things going for it. Obvious fact number one was they they were owned by the Guardian Media Group and had access to the Manchester Evening News’ facilities. There was also quite a push for Channel M within the MEN itself during this time too.

From memory they also had use of the Urbis building for next to nothing too. Considering the vast majority of its output came from the one studio, they really utilised it to its full potential.

Channel M was on a shoestring budget from day one, but they had imagination and creativity in their output and it showed. You got the feeling the powers that be at the MEN were happy to keep it going for as long as possible, but when the Guardian started to cut back on the channel and then sold off the MEN to the Mirror, you knew at that point the writing was on the wall.

They really benefited from being on Sky and NTL/Virgin, but they needed to be on Freeview and that didn’t happen before the Granada region switched fully over to Digital, by which point was too late.

The G-MAN mux (which is still going today) had Channel M on it? Was it on epg 50 I think? Then epg 51, 52, 53 etc had the shopping channels that were also carried on G-MAN...I recall the epg names of 'Manchester shopping 1' or something like that on one of the teleshopping channels G-MAN carried.

This must have been during the early days when the North West region went digital, 2009/10 maybe?