Local TV

[Keith]

I do wonder if we'll ever see a time when there is the political will to see the regulator reinstate stricter local and regional requirements on commercial TV and radio.

I suspect if there was an admission the Local TV network was a failure and licences weren't needed they'd probably put the onus on the BBC to plug the so called gap, which of course is what they wanted to do in the first place with the trials of a looped hour of local news for the West Midlands, split into ten minutes sub-regional chunks. That sort of thing could easily be done through the iPlayer nowadays provided they have adequate funding to provide such a service.

I suspect if there's any change it won't come until there's a change in government, as if I recall local TV was a pet project of Jeremy Hunt back in 2010. I doubt it's high on the current political agenda, and they're unlikely to want to admit that for the most part local TV has been a failure.

Personally I think that OFCOM should enforce a requirement for the licence holders to either increase the amount of local content to a more substantial amount (e.g. 10 hours a week), or forfeit their freeview channel 7 (or 8) number and move to a free number in the 90s. I suspect some would happily accept relegation or That's TV might just then close their local channels and rebrand 'That's TV Gold'.

When it comes to local radio I think this can still work fairly well, perhaps in part due to lower overheads. Where I live our local radio station has recently won a few national awards for its programmes.