The Newsroom

London Live

announce News presenters (December 2013)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
BR
Brekkie
IIRC London Live didn't actually take the licence fee money available to them.

Sadly it is evident to get anywhere close to a budget to do a local channel justice it needs to be through the BBC, and frankly the demand isn't there for much beyond the content on BBC1, and I think even if they did go forward they'd focus on on demand and streaming content.
NG
noggin Founding member
Brekkie posted:
IIRC London Live didn't actually take the licence fee money available to them.

Sadly it is evident to get anywhere close to a budget to do a local channel justice it needs to be through the BBC, and frankly the demand isn't there for much beyond the content on BBC1, and I think even if they did go forward they'd focus on on demand and streaming content.


If only the BBC had been allowed to expand the Local TV trial they undertook in the mid-00s. If they could have found a way of working with local print media it could have been a win-win for both local journalism and viewers/readers.
Night Thoughts and Woodpecker gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member
Markymark posted:
noggin posted:

The Local Mux is run at massively lower bitrates (as it uses a much more robust modulation scheme to mitigate the incredibly low powers the stations transmit at) and I have no idea what concatenation is going on from Playout to my TV but the picture quality is so low as to be borderline unwatchable on a reasonable sized screen.


Actually in most locations it's transmitted at broadly the power level correct to achieve parity with the main national muxes.

Crystal Palace transmits the London local mux at 30kW. The modulation scheme used is QPSK, which broadly
(all else being equal) gives a 8-10dB advantage over 64QAM. In other words, if the London Mux was transmitted at 64QAM it would need to be 250-300 kW to achieve the same coverage. The main six national
muxes at CP are 200 kW, so if anything it's super serving the area

Other local muxes in other cities are typically 5 to 10kW, which compares with 50 to 100 kW for the main muxes.

The special version of PSB 2 (aka D3/4) that Ridge Hill transmits to Gloucestershire was until a year ago, 64QAM at 10kW, it's now a QPSK transmission at 1 kW, (as it only carries a single channel (ITV 1 West). The coverage is identical.

Where the local muxes do differ, is most are on highly directional beams, so just because you can receive the national muxes from a Tx site, it doesn't necessarily follow you can receive the local mux. Also, they are far more 'interference limited' than the national muxes, because adjacent areas frequency share (though again being QPSK, this allows greater immunity)


I think we're saying the same thing from two different angles.

The QPSK (and low bitrate) is used to improve reception at lower powers, to match the coverage of the higher power muxes, that use less robust modulation (to deliver higher bitrates).
RK
Rkolsen
noggin posted:
Brekkie posted:
IIRC London Live didn't actually take the licence fee money available to them.

Sadly it is evident to get anywhere close to a budget to do a local channel justice it needs to be through the BBC, and frankly the demand isn't there for much beyond the content on BBC1, and I think even if they did go forward they'd focus on on demand and streaming content.


If only the BBC had been allowed to expand the Local TV trial they undertook in the mid-00s. If they could have found a way of working with local print media it could have been a win-win for both local journalism and viewers/readers.


What was the local tv trial? I can’t find anything.
MA
Markymark
noggin posted:
Markymark posted:
noggin posted:

The Local Mux is run at massively lower bitrates (as it uses a much more robust modulation scheme to mitigate the incredibly low powers the stations transmit at) and I have no idea what concatenation is going on from Playout to my TV but the picture quality is so low as to be borderline unwatchable on a reasonable sized screen.


Actually in most locations it's transmitted at broadly the power level correct to achieve parity with the main national muxes.

Crystal Palace transmits the London local mux at 30kW. The modulation scheme used is QPSK, which broadly
(all else being equal) gives a 8-10dB advantage over 64QAM. In other words, if the London Mux was transmitted at 64QAM it would need to be 250-300 kW to achieve the same coverage. The main six national
muxes at CP are 200 kW, so if anything it's super serving the area

Other local muxes in other cities are typically 5 to 10kW, which compares with 50 to 100 kW for the main muxes.

The special version of PSB 2 (aka D3/4) that Ridge Hill transmits to Gloucestershire was until a year ago, 64QAM at 10kW, it's now a QPSK transmission at 1 kW, (as it only carries a single channel (ITV 1 West). The coverage is identical.

Where the local muxes do differ, is most are on highly directional beams, so just because you can receive the national muxes from a Tx site, it doesn't necessarily follow you can receive the local mux. Also, they are far more 'interference limited' than the national muxes, because adjacent areas frequency share (though again being QPSK, this allows greater immunity)


I think we're saying the same thing from two different angles.

The QPSK (and low bitrate) is used to improve reception at lower powers, to match the coverage of the higher power muxes, that use less robust modulation (to deliver higher bitrates).


I think we probably are Cool

I do agree the technical ( as well as every other aspect) quality is diabolical !

As no one actually watches the local channels anyway , they’d do better to use H.264 rather than MPEG2 to code the channels, that would give a better picture for the 2.5 megs worth of available bandwidth!
MA
Markymark
Rkolsen posted:
noggin posted:
Brekkie posted:
IIRC London Live didn't actually take the licence fee money available to them.

Sadly it is evident to get anywhere close to a budget to do a local channel justice it needs to be through the BBC, and frankly the demand isn't there for much beyond the content on BBC1, and I think even if they did go forward they'd focus on on demand and streaming content.


If only the BBC had been allowed to expand the Local TV trial they undertook in the mid-00s. If they could have found a way of working with local print media it could have been a win-win for both local journalism and viewers/readers.


What was the local tv trial? I can’t find anything.


It was an Internet delivery experiment in the English Midlands, in conjunction with the BBC’s local radio stations. Local newspapers protested about unfair competition etc
IS
Inspector Sands
It was on the red button too, but I can't remember how that worked.

There's still a few fragments of the local TV service knocking around on bbc.co.uk:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2005/11/24/birminghamtv_meet_the_team_feature.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/shropshiretv/archive/2006/jan_mar.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/content/articles/2005/11/18/local_tv_video_appeal_feature.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/content/image_galleries/localtv_fat_donkey_gallery.shtml?5
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 28 March 2019 10:54am
SuperDave and Rkolsen gave kudos
BR
Brekkie
Think it was an hour long loop split into six areas with 10 mins per area.
TE
Technologist
The 6 local news by 10 mins was a way if getting “your regions local news” on a single channel
The Midlands was selected as it has 6 LR other regions fewer !

The long term plan was each element ( news bulletin , reports, Barker for VOD) could be refreshed as required
( and you could set your PVR to record the latest version over recording the last one)

But the main service was VOD on the bbc website..
And that this was more than just current news ... and reflected the culture etc industry etc of that locality ...

So not an emitted service ..whuch is the mistake that has been made by Mr Hunt.
It dificuktb to fill 24 or even 18 hours of airtime with interesting content with little money
NG
noggin Founding member
Rkolsen posted:
noggin posted:
Brekkie posted:
IIRC London Live didn't actually take the licence fee money available to them.

Sadly it is evident to get anywhere close to a budget to do a local channel justice it needs to be through the BBC, and frankly the demand isn't there for much beyond the content on BBC1, and I think even if they did go forward they'd focus on on demand and streaming content.


If only the BBC had been allowed to expand the Local TV trial they undertook in the mid-00s. If they could have found a way of working with local print media it could have been a win-win for both local journalism and viewers/readers.


What was the local tv trial? I can’t find anything.


It was an experiment that the BBC English regions trialled in the Midlands. They created local news content using multi-skilled VJ-style reporters across a BBC region (mainly centred around BBC local radio stations in that region) to build on the BBC Local websites that then existed (which have now also closed effectively due to competition concerns and BBC cost reductions). The video content was streamable via websites, but also looped on a Red Button stream. (The trial pre-dated Smartphone apps)

The theory was that the local radio/website operations could be upgraded to produce local video news content too, but after the trial finished, it was clear that it was politically too difficult for the BBC to continue to roll it out as a full service. The content was quite basic, but was a lot more watchable than the current UK local TV stuff (it was like Mustard TV in some ways)
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Mouseboy33 posted:
London Lite posted:
An idea they should have gone with from day 1 is to simulcast Mayor's Question Time, it ticks more PSB boxes than showing Confessions of a Window Cleaner. No real effort needs to go into it, they just have to restream the feed from City Hall.



What!? That is insane. I wasnt even aware they even did this. THis was a massive mistake. They should have made every effort to work with the City to stream the Mayors Question time and other relevant meetings. I will remark the Mayors QT is nearly 3 hours long in some instances so it would like have to be edited and repackaged. Wonder what Disney or Sky/NBC would do with a local channel in London. Pie in the sky....


I would probably argue that's the sort of thing that commercial TV can't or won't do as it doesn't attract the viewership, I mean BBC Parliament only attracts less than a tenth of a percent of the viewing audience and that's only primarily covering the House of Commons and the Lords. That's on a national scale so the likes of London Live on its peanuts budget would probably make less money doing that than they do now with the stuff they already show. In fact the Mayors Question Time is already aired (albeit not live) on BBC Parliament.

As to what Disney and/or Sky would have done... Probably what STV did with their channel(s). Launch them, fund them properly, then realise its commercial suicide, unsustainable and shut it down again. Remember Sky have launched and closed services before that attracted far more viewers than any Local TV station has done.
BR
Brekkie
Didn't Sky have a local Tyne and Wear service for a bit?

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