Local TV may be coming to a small screen near you soon – but only if you are in one of the 20 towns and cities unveiled by the government as one of the "pioneers" of the new service.
London, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Cardiff were among the 20 conurbations earmarked for local TV by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt on Tuesday.
It is considerably fewer than the list of 65 towns and cities originally identified by media regulator Ofcom as "potential pioneer locations".
The government also revealed today that BSkyB and Virgin have committed to offering either apps or the use of the yellow button on their interactive services to fulfil the heavily debated obligation that the new local TV services receive "appropriate prominence" on electronic programme guides (EPGs) when they are launched.
Today's announcement comes four months after Hunt asked the initial 65 eligible areas to make a case as to why their town or city should be one of the first to receive local TV services.
Hunt has now trimmed the list to the areas that have been identified as having "significant levels of interest" from potential operators – who see an opportunity to monetise the Freeview-based TV services – and audiences.
The first 20 areas to receive local TV services will be: Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Preston, Southampton and Swansea.
"Local TV will be a fundamental change in broadcasting in this country, meeting a real demand for local news and content," said Hunt. "We are now putting in place the measures needed to establish a series of commercially viable local TV stations."
Helen Goodman, the shadow minister for media, criticised the local TV plans, saying they were a distraction from the controversial cuts to the BBC's local radio services which have been much criticised by MPs.
She said the £40m of licence fee money that will be spent on local TV, including £25m start-up capital costs and £5m a year over three years on acquiring local content, meant that the government was "robbing Peter to pay Paul".
"The BBC has always provided excellent local content, but as a result of the harsh licence fee settlement agreed by the government, many local services are being slashed by 20%. This government is distracting attention away from these cuts by promoting new services with old money," she said.
"Labour backs community enterprises and wants to see new business flourish. However, there is little point in cutting high quality services which the public enjoy to fund other projects."
The government said that it intends to look at whether it should relax rules that bar independent television production companies from owning more than 25% of any of the local TV licences.
Hunt said three pieces of legislation will soon be put to parliament to enable the launch of local TV services.
One piece will make spectrum available for broadcast, the second is a local licensing regime and the third is to ensure EPG prominence for the services.
The government said a further 24 areas have been identified for a future round of licensing of local TV services.
These are: Aberdeen, Ayr, Bangor, Barnstaple, Basingstoke, Bedford, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derry/Londonderry, Dundee, Guildford, Hereford, Inverness, Kidderminster, Limavady, Luton, Maidstone, Malvern, Mold, Salisbury, Sheffield, Stoke on Trent, Stratford upon Avon and York.
Hunt has had a rocky ride gaining acceptance for his local TV plan, with detractors claiming it is not financially viable.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport has said that £25m in local TV infrastructure costs will be met from the BBC licence fee, with a further £5m of licence fee money to be spent annually for three years on local content.
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Comments
13 December 2011 5:08PM
Why not spend this waste of money on something which already provides a local news service and is under threat of cuts?
13 December 2011 5:14PM
I am not understanding why this needs government money? Surely, free market economics, if virgin/BSkyB see they can make a profit from local tv in a city, then why not let them do it? Yes, it will be low budget and laced with adverts, but so what if there is a market for it?
I am absolutely in favour of keeping the BBC as it is with public money, its excellent value for money and one of the genuinely great things about this country - and seen worldwide as such. But it seems Jeremy Hunt, given half a chance would flog the BBC to Murdoch for a knock down price.
13 December 2011 5:16PM
Didn't we used to have "local" TV channels until ITV merged most of them?
Is there any information on the point of these channels?
13 December 2011 5:31PM
Waste of time, BBC does it better. Why does Murdoch want a local TV station when hes got Fox TV?
13 December 2011 5:32PM
*snicker*
13 December 2011 6:33PM
Do we know yet how much Hunt has spent on advisors and consultants for this vanity project?
Preferably a breakdown of a) costs incurred up to the point he was told by his advisors and outside consultants that this was not a sensible project and b) how much thereafter.
13 December 2011 6:51PM
Jeremy Hunt has said the MINIMUM broadcast time per day for these channels of local news etc will be one hour. Interest declared: I work in local television.
We broadcast just over an hour of telly per day, and it requires (A) lots of well-trained professional staff and (B) lots of televisual stories to report. So not plenty of dry magistrates court copy that you could fill a paper with etc.
I can assure you that Mr Hunt has not spoken to any TV journalists about this plan, as they would have laughed at him and then shaken their heads. Telly is expensive and time-consuming.
This has been tried, it has failed, it will fail again. Why they are cutting BBC local radio at the same time as doing this can only be gross incompetence on the Govt's part - or probably more likely, gross ignorance.
It won't be money that will kill it, it will be people's realisation that the product is just not good enough, followed by a lack of money.
13 December 2011 6:52PM
We had a terrestrial local tv channel in Oxford already, Six TV. Started broadcasting in 1999, died in 2009. Rather surprised that given it was a proven failure here, they've decided to do it over again.
13 December 2011 6:57PM
"it seems Jeremy Hunt, given half a chance would flog the BBC to Murdoch for a knock down price"
Good God, don't put ideas into their heads!
13 December 2011 7:19PM
Relaxing the ownership rules..?
Alarm bell starts to ring.
13 December 2011 8:38PM
That's a lot of money! What's in it for Jeremy and/or his friends?
13 December 2011 9:00PM
The Norwich station could be the setting for a new Alan Partridge series!
13 December 2011 9:59PM
Unlucky old Grimsby has had local TV via the Virgin Network for many years now. Channel 7 as it's called is just laughable if this is anything like what the rest of you are going to get I do feel very sad for you all. Also sad for Grimsby as it seems the Channel 7 people are getting the GY licence. Really not sure why a 24 hour station is required. More locally orientated news would be a good thing for sure but this does not require 24 hour full time station full of padding just check out the rubbish carried on Channel 7 in GY. Seems they prove the point that local means amateurish.
Storm says we used to have local TV with ITV - Sorry storm what you had with ITV was regional TV not City/Town based stations. The BBC does a reasonable job of local news on a regional basis, but not really localised enough so there is a need for more localised news.
I'm guessing some of the local papers will hate it unless they get their claws into it.
13 December 2011 10:35PM
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14 December 2011 3:41AM
Local/Regional, we had some kind of local programming even if it was for a whole region and not a town. I can't see how it will work though, who is going to tune in for a couple of hours (because I suspect it will only be for a few hours a day) when they have the option to watch the other channels?
Local newspapers will hate it, I think papers are still a good way to report local news, rather than a TV channel.
With all the cuts our delightful government are making, this seems like an odd thing to be spending money on. Although I guess if people are cooped up watching Telford TV they won't be minded to run outside and break something.
14 December 2011 7:52AM
How strange that virtually all the towns and cities in the first wave of Hunt's local TV revolution already have local TV services provided by the BBC,ITV or both.Who will want to compete with the BBC and Granada in, say, Manchester ?
14 December 2011 7:25PM
The first thing I must say is Sheffield should have been in the first set of proposals, in fact surely the big cities should have been first as if it can't work in at least some of the bigger cities then surely it won't work elsewhere?
I believe to help local TV work you've got to cut the BBC's Regional News in England to 9 government regions - LONDON, SOUTH EAST, SOUTH WEST, WEST MIDLANDS, EAST MIDLANDS, EAST ANGLIA, NORTH WEST, YORKSHIRE & NORTH EAST & CUMBRIA (with ITV1 producing for the same regions - the West and East Midlands are different government regions). The money saved would go towards paying for other types of Regional programming, local Radio and maybe a bit more towards this local TV project. This could potentially allow the space for local TV stations, local Newspapers and websites to thrive.
International, National, Regional and Local News...imagine it.