London Live – the first television channel dedicated to the UK’s capital – is set to officially take to the air on Monday evening.
The Evgeny Lebedev-backed channel is to become one of 19 local broadcasting channels which have been kick-started by a Government-imposed subsidy from the BBC licence fee of £40 million. It will air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a bid to rival broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV and Sky.
Commenting on the London launch, which will go live from 6.30pm this evening, Lebedev told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on Sunday that the channel has been created with the intention of being “completely different” from all other channels.
“And the way we are different, is unlike taking well-known names and celebrities and just putting them on the channel, we’ve tried to create a launchpad for new talent,” he said.
Shows confirmed so far will include London’s first dedicated TV football show – fan-led and guaranteeing airtime to all 14 league clubs every week – alongside “unashamedly ultra-local stories” that will attempt to help shape London’s neighbourhoods.
Unlike most other Local TV channels, London Live will benefit from its close business relationship with a widely circulated local newspaper. The London Evening Standard, which is delivered free at rail and tube stations across the capital, currently reaches 800,000 people every day.
Local TV launched on 26 November 2013 in Grimsby, with further channels set to roll out across the UK throughout 2014, having the potential to reach 12 million households.
However, new research from OASYS in conjunction with YouGov reveals that Londoners are the least likely to watch a local TV channel in the UK at just 44%.
The research also revealed that three quarters of the British public do not know that local TV is launching across the UK.
Media journalist Raymond Snoddy wrote last year that the standards and appearance of the local channels will “inevitably be judged” by the quality of the much more highly funded channels that surround them.
“The combined result could be low audiences,” he said, “very low audiences indeed and that will make it difficult to sell advertising – any advertising when the novelty of the £10 slot wears off…the danger is that if even modest audience targets are not met initially it would be easy for an aura of failure to develop around local TV.”
However, Snoddy added: “It would be nice, heart warming even, if local TV were to establish itself and outlive the period of subsidy.”
Local TV will be available on Freeview channel 8 in England and Northern Ireland and Freeview channel 26 in Scotland and Wales.
