London Live

I think local TV for every single area would be too expensive for the Beeb, but I'd like the BBC to go big on local in the coming decades because the commercial sector is going to abandon that zone. Everything is about scale these days commercially.

For me, if commercial radio goes fully national with only token local bulletins then I'd make BBC local radio 35+ and, ideally, launch a spin-off Radio 2 Extra for pensioners and those left behind by Radio 2's modernisation.

In terms of London, I don't think broadcasters have ever got over the heritage of local news for London being a relatively recent phenomenon. The amount of times I see a London story in the national news and wonder why anyone in the rest of the country would give a toss, meanwhile London News is padding stuff out about 15 minutes in.

Could be worse though - if it ever becomes That's London then London Live will look like Thames.

Indeed in an alternative televisual universe had the ITC gone down a slightly different route in the early 90s with Channel 5 Thames could have ended up resurfacing as a city station for London.

I've always wondered why the Channel 5 city-based plan was dropped. A channel that combined locally originated and mass-appeal national programming would have had a far better chance of succeeding than what exists now.

It wasn't dropped, it was just not licenced, primarily because it was backed by Thames, who had just lost the Channel 3 Franchise, and they were not willing to hand it over, because Thames was being punished for airing Death On The Rock.

It was a government, using a quango proxy, to punish a private company, for daring to expose something the government didn't want exposed.

The Thames proposal (for Channel 5) was rejected because they couldn't raise the cash to finance it. Their only significant backer was Warner Bros who pulled out at the last minute. The proposal was fronted by Moses Znaimer and based on his Citytv concept. Thames we're providing their Euston Road facilities and management.

Initially the plan was to launch a London station, followed by Manchester and then Birmingham, with other 'affiliates' launching later. The national spine consisted of mainly movies and music programming, with local versions of CityPulse and Cityline from what I can remember.

Whoever took on Channel 5 was going to have a difficult enough time with a national station, without having to provide local programming as well. Occam's razor comes to mind on this one.

Although I think the plan was that C5 launched on a regional basis in much the same way ITV did, but with one franchise holder rather than several. It didn't get very far - but no doubt would have had a much better chance of success in the 90s than what happened recently.


I think one of the key reasons it didn't happen was because ITV didn't want to compete for advertising at a local level and of course the franchises had just been awarded for ITV on the presumption they'd have a monopoly on local commercial TV in the area.

All ifs and buts of course but had C5 been used to strengthen television production in the regions and launched on a regional level then what subsequently happened with ITV may have been very different. Jeremy Hunt and co. kept refering to the US market when launching their UK local channels and the truth is there it is competition that makes them thrive, whether affiliated to networks or not. There are not many examples, if any, in the US, of local markets with just the one local station.

Noticed that LL stream London Film Club on Twitter and Periscope on Thursday evenings live at 7pm. In that edition, Hannah links directly mentioning online viewers and they take viewer contributions which are edited out of the linear version on Friday.

According to this http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/regulatory_framework/service_licences/radio/2016/localradio_apr16.pdf, the target audience for BBC Local Radio is 50+, though I seem to remember reading somewhere that they wanted to change that.

BBC LR is being reformed, the first is the axing of the networked 7-10pm show currently broadcast from Radio Leeds for either local or regional programming.

Currently BBC Introducing is LR's younger skewed programming, but they are planning on making LR younger without alienating the older audience. LR managers will also be allowed to tweak the music playlist to cater to local tastes. BBC Radio London already has an eclectic music policy.

Periscope? How 2015! Wasn't one of their big launch tricks that they would be available to watch LIVE and streaming online all day so the audience could interact? That never happened. Pointless. Given the audience who watches LL, not a great tool. I suspect a) a minority and b) it's a small/closed circle of contributors/evangelists who interact and so how does that help getting the 'word' 'out'? Pointless and behind the curve. Christ, even the Standard has the jump on them on professional live streaming stuff. I'm embarrassed for them.

Noticed you can also watch 'the latest news for London' recorded at 5pm in a similar way!

169 Periscoper's have apparently done so this evening.

Mind you, all credit to London Live - at least they told us Kate had given birth - The West End Final edition of The Standard picked up at 6.20 led with her going into hospital at 6am this morning.