Sad day for Channel M but not for Local TV
Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by helen in blogs, featured
It is with regret that today I learned of the demise of Channel M. Many will look on the fate of the city station as a feta compli in a market increasingly unsustainable for local providers. Trinity Mirror group will no doubt have decided that the channel did not fit strategically with plans to bid for publicly funded Independent News Consortia under Government plans to plug the recently relinquished regional news slot on ITV. However this is a short term view based on a system which has never truly favoured local TV.
Many policy makers are convinced that we will all be watching TV online or via our high speed internet connected HD TV’s however the reality is somewhat different. Living in Hull I am barely able to get longer than a minute of content before I’m making another cup of tea whilst buffering takes place. This is not the kind of experience I convinced we all want? Television is still integral to our everyday lives and for the majority of the population the first source of information and entertainment. Local TV does have a place in the connected future if the business model, infrastructure and political will allow.
United for Local Television have been lobbying for a new way of receiving Local TV for almost 10 years and it’s really very simple; Government provides “Channel 6” on both Freeview and cable to be reserved as a local channel, operating as independent local franchises but with network scale achieved through programme and resource sharing. ULTV has also proposed that robust protections be put in place to enable additional local TV channels to launch in the future in the so-called ‘interleaved’ spectrum (the vast majority of which Ofcom plans to grant to a single band manager).
There are obvious arguments against such a solution all of which I have heard before including the cost issue, however concessions are being met with existing Local providers and new stations are relaunching and exisiting ones sustaining their presence. The model long term is collaborative, non profit and reflective of the audience needs and I firmly believe that when a situation appears ‘loose loose’ it often isn’t.
For more about ULTV and Local TV: http://www.unitedforlocaltv.com, http://www.channel7tv.co.uk, http://www.nvtv.co.uk/nvtv/welcome.html
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