Local TV runs in to trouble

The BBC Trust has delayed paying out the latest instalment of up to £25m to fund the costs of transmitting the local TV channels, after allegations of financial impropriety at Comux, the company that builds and manages that infrastructure.
Without the money, a second round of proposed channels, covering Cambridge, Middlesbrough and York cannot be launched.

However, there are more serious problems facing the channels that have already launched. London Live – the largest channel to launch so far, which shares the same owner as the capital’s Evening Standard newspaper – has recorded close-to-zero audience figures for some of its news programmes.
On Friday, it emerged that just three weeks after launch, London Live’s editorial director Stefano Hatfield, has departed.
The step comes as audience figures show that the station’s breakfast show, Wake Up London, has averaged only 2,400 viewers, out of the 9 million people to which it broadcasts. Wake Up London has on eight occasions broadcast to an audience measured by the official TV ratings body, Barb, at zero.

Not The One Show, London Live’s early evening topical discussion programme, has averaged 4,000 viewers. Its lowest audience figure, on Easter Monday, was 200 viewers.
Hatfield expressed thanks for the opportunity he had been given in heading the channel, and added: “I now have the chance to be involved in yet another launch, which I hope to be able to announce next month.”

London Live’s chief executive said he had “absolutely, one hundred thousand per cent confidence” in the senior editorial team that Hatfield leaves behind, namely head of news and current affairs Vikki Cook, and head of commissioning Jonathan Boseley.

There were proposals to provide a national backbone for local TV channels in the UK, where programming costs could have been shared, this idea was dropped.
While available to London viewers on satellite and Freeview, London Live is not available on Freesat.