Local TV: Will it survive?

A summarised version from an article on www.bbc.co.uk/news

   Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke at the Oxford Television Convention and announced his plans for a network a local television services to be launched across the UK. He stated that the stations would need to be supported by a national digital channel, therefore he invited media organizations to suggest and bring forth ideas of how this could be run. Local television is something he seems to be very passionate about, as he has been bringing up the subject of Local TV for years.
   
   Most media executives have been very skeptical about it, as well as Labour's shadow culture minister claiming that it is a ''vanity project''. In mainland Europe and North America local services have been proved to work, so Hunt argues why not here. If he gets his way with his action plan he hopes we will see the first local TV services licensed to broadcast by the end of next year.

    His plan is for a national digital channel to act as a 'spine' for local services to opt into, each broadcasting for a couple of hours at peek times of the day. It would have a prominent place on the electronic programme guide (EPG) and he'd like to run it on all digital platforms, including Freeview, Sky, Virgin and YouView. 

   By 1st March he hopes that new and existing media providers will have come up with an idea into how they would run it. His department will then draw up a blueprint and a licensing system to get local services up and running. Support for the idea is growing. An independent review panel told the government that up to 15 city stations might be viable on digital terrestrial television- provided there was a national channel to link them and attract national advertising. 


   This would be an interim solution until more homes had high-speed broadband, at which point dozen of local TV stations may be possible, via the internet. The former BBC director general chairs and industry group called the Local Television Advisory Committee, which believes many more local stations are possible because they can run cheaper than the review panel suggested and could attract more local advertising.