The latest local TV channel to launch today – Made in Cardiff – has a strategy its producers say will ensure its success. But will it bring in the viewing figures advertisers need? By Raymond Snoddy.
Once upon a time the cable franchise in Aberdeen launched an ambitious television news service designed to compete head-to-head with Grampian, the then local ITV franchise.
An established Grampian presenter was hired to front the service with a dedicated team, and journalists were transported from London for the launch of the ambitious project that would put cable on the map as a serious player in the broadcasting firmament.
For an evening the champagne flowed in the Granite City but within a few weeks the service was over. The costs were hopelessly inappropriate for any possible audience that could ever have been attracted.
The daft, early days of cable when more than 50 separate geographical franchises were licenced and launched took a generation to become a viable business. In a Darwinian process of takeovers the franchises were finally distilled down into a single national franchise held by Virgin Media, now owned by Americans – as indeed were many of those original cable franchises – in this case Liberty Global.
The parallels between cable and local television are far from exact. It is a different business and a very different financial model but there are a number of similarities.
Both were much wanted by government, or at least in the case of local TV by former Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
As with cable there are strong local proponents of the medium that, at least in its present comprehensive form, is new to the UK. There is no mistaking the sense of exuberance, of new beginnings, though many seem to be like the archetypical divorcees on the brink of re-marriage – enjoying the triumph of hope over experience.
The number of licences likely to be on offer is remarkably similar – Ofcom is planning to licence more than 50 stations with 21 already awarded. In most places so far there has been no shortage of applicants coming forward with their cash.
And yes, the latest batch under consideration does indeed include Aberdeen, although there are unlikely to be many bottles of champagne on offer this time around.
Aberdeen is one for the future. This week the drum-roll is for Made in Cardiff which launches today (15 October) bringing the total number of launches to seven, and promises programmes totally dedicated to those living in and around the Welsh capital.
Station manager Bryn Roberts talks about the “buzz” around the launch and says his plan is that by next year everyone in Cardiff will have either appeared on the station or knows someone who has.
There will be “around 20 full-time staff” and many of them have had experience at Sky, ITN, Channel 4 and BBC Wales.
The theory, which may turn out to be a good one, is that the local BBC and ITV services have to cover all of Wales and cannot devote all their time to Cardiff even though the Welsh capital must generate a disproportionate number of Welsh stories.
In an echo of the programme offerings of London Live there will be a magazine show What’s Occurring, Cardiff?. It will come from a different venue every day and will be like “The One Show meets a gig guide on tour.”
Local people can get involved by sending details of events happening on their patch. There will be a chat show, a sports programme covering all sports including roller derby and baseball and 1-2-1, which will feature in-depth interviews with “those who play a big part in the life of Cardiff.”
The problem will be the same as that faced by all large city-based local television stations. They will be expected to produce professional looking programmes on limited budgets and will have to prove that they reach audiences large enough to attract even local advertising.
At least there is the weight of a group behind the Cardiff station – Made in Bristol launched last week with Leeds and Tyne and Wear due in the first half of next month.
By then the Made In stations boast they will “cover more than 11 million people.”
Ah, the old reach issue. You can cover however many millions you want, the only thing advertisers will be interested in is actual viewing numbers.
In between the launch of Made In Cardiff and its sister stations in the North East there should have been another even larger launch – in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city – in November.
Alas Ofcom, the communications regulator, covered itself in glory by awarding the Birmingham licence to a company which collapsed into administration without a single second being broadcast, and apparently without benefit of studios or staff.
The plot grows more murky. A new bidder for the Birmingham licence selected by the administrators, has been rejected, at least initially, by Ofcom and a re-advertising of the licence now seems the most likely outcome, with long resulting delays.
Commenting in the wake of the Birmingham administration, the regulator has noted, laconically, that it is “very unlikely” that all the local TV stations it is licensing will succeed. Quite.
And then there is London Live which has managed to prise a small concession out of Ofcom on the number of hours of local television it must broadcast – which was of course what the whole process was supposed to be about in the first place.
Rightly Ofcom rejected the London Live attempt, four months after launch, to reduce its hours of local programme a day from 18 to eight hours with only one hour, instead of three, in prime time.
Ofcom saw such a proposal as substantially changing the nature of the channel. If they had decided otherwise some of those who lost to London Live, part of The Independent and Evening Standard stable, would have been straight off to court.
The final and most important similarity between cable and local television is likely to be the same rolling programme of consolidation, at least as far as the larger city stations are concerned. There will be collapses and losers and maybe one powerful player will emerge which will recreate, in effect, what Hunt rejected – a national entertainment channel.
This would pay for a mandated number of hours of local television services around the country but would almost certainly require further legislation.
