I suppose the argument will be that rather than stretch out what they have to fill the hours, they can commit to making the hours they cover news better. Thing is, it's impossible to regulate that.
I'm just struggling to see the point of the station in general, however. It has a very prominent position on Freeview because of the public service commitments it agreed to. If the owners feel like running a station full of repeats then by all means join the queue and launch on channel 89.
Now people might say ITV retains a prominent position despite cutting local programming to the bone. Difference is, people would miss ITV if it disappeared. Can anyone say that about London Live?
I suppose the argument will be that rather than stretch out what they have to fill the hours, they can commit to making the hours they cover news better. Thing is, it's impossible to regulate that.
I'm just struggling to see the point of the station in general, however. It has a very prominent position on Freeview because of the public service commitments it agreed to. If the owners feel like running a station full of repeats then by all means join the queue and launch on channel 89.
Now people might say ITV retains a prominent position despite cutting local programming to the bone. Difference is, people would miss ITV if it disappeared. Can anyone say that about London Live?
The short answer is 'no', no one would miss it. They should just pull the plug on this misguided experiment and close all these local channels down. They are a complete and utter waste of time and money.
It's true to say that the bulletins can be quite repetitious - the two hour shows have (at best) an hour's worth of content stretched over a two hour slot.
I'd prefer a shorter but pacier bulletin.
The London Live News bulletins have improved greatly, but still feel S-L-O-W and lethargic.
Or knowing their habit of inconsistent scheduling, you'll probably find Monday's news will be 2 hours long starting at 6, Tuesday's will be an hour from 7, they simply won't bother with Wednesday, Thursday's will start at 8 for half an hour .......
In their submission to Ofcom, London Live claim they get their biggest share of audience after 6pm (no surprise there), but also in the morning.
Could we see the return of a breakfast show (6-8.30am) Monday to Friday and an hour of news from 6pm Monday to Sunday?
The breakfast show could essentially be a repeating 15 minute wheel of news, sport and weather interspersed with live travel updates. The majority of resources could then be employed on the main 6pm show.
If they could supplement this with regular short updates during daytime and prime time, this would give the news service greater exposure to a wider audience.
They're not going to expand into a full breakfast service if they're cutting back - and if they're rating well there with whatever they're showing they're unlikely to replace it with news.
Arguably though they need to get a news update service in place around the popular repeat run programmes that can then point people to their main news programming. That would probably be the right compromise between content that rates and actually providing a local service.
I'm not talking about a full breakfast service like they had at the start, or even the 90 minute morning programme they run now.
I'm thinking more of a 10 minute bulletin of stories (overnight headlines plus a few packages from the previous 6pm show) mixed with live weather and travel updates, repeated every 15 minutes.
I think if they went down that route though they'd mix it in with other programming, so say have news at 7am, 7.45, 8.30 and 9.15am with half hour programmes in between.
As much as a wheel of news is beloved on this forum, and I'd love to see it, I really don't think London Live has any interest in doing that.
As a nation we've always gravitated towards radio in the morning, with the BBC and ITV (and once Channel 4) superserving the breakfast audience. People who want updates on traffic problems will look at their Facebook or Twitter these days, along with local radio.
I could be wrong here, but the stuff London Live puts out first thing in the morning shows their intent for that time period - zero. Once upon a time you'd have just shoved the test card up instead. They're only interested in the audience getting in at night, channel hopping who might land upon something familiar and give it a watch. That's it. Everything else is filler or public service obligations.