Tomorrow will see Estuary TV, the first ‘Local TV’ channel, go live in Grimsby
The new channel for northern Lincolnshire and east Yorkshire will broadcast on Freeview Channel 8 to 370,000 homes, and will include a range of programmes covering business, history, current affairs and news.
Formerly Channel 7, Estuary TV will be the first Local TV station to launch with another 18 to follow around the UK.
Local TV is being kick-started by a Government-imposed “subsidy” from the BBC licence fee of £40 million – £25 million for the infrastructure and a further £5 million a year for three years in the form of purchase of filmed items.
Despite the low audience figures, advertisers will be enticed to work with the new channels as new Ofcom rules mean Local TV will not be subject to advertising ‘minutage’. Broadcasters, such as ITV and Channel 4 are allowed only seven minutes of commercials per hour; so for local stations, the advertising gates are open.
It means companies can take up offers of advertorials and other advert-based programmes and venture into TV advertising where before they may have steered clear.
Some industry experts still remain unconvinced, however, with many concerned that the stations will simply be too small to be a success.
Media journalist Raymond Snoddy wrote earlier in the 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, Lia Nici, executive producer of Estuary TV insists the launch is “a great opportunity for people to engage with us and learn about what we can offer and how we can work together. We want industry to see the benefits of having a local channel and realise that advertising locally is affordable.”
