Local TV - an introduction
Brian Butterworth published on UK Free TV The current situation
In comparison with most other countries in the world, the UK had always had a poor local TV service.BBC News runs a service each for Scotland (population 5.1 million), Wales (3.0 million) and Northern Ireland (1.8 million).
For the 51.1 million people in England the BBC runs services from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne, Bristol, Southampton, Plymouth, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Hull and Tunbridge Wells - an average of 3.65 million people per region.
On Channel 3, UTV provides a service for Northern Ireland, STV has two services for Scotland, and ITV provides a single service for Wales, and only nine services for England: Border, North East, Yorkshire, Granada, Anglia, Central, West + West Country, Meridian and London.
BBC and ITV local TV
The BBC did trail a "county based" local TV news service in Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, the West Midlands, Staffordshire and Shropshire, but it was of very poor quality and the BBC Trust afterwards placed a ban on the BBC providing any further breakdown of the traditional BBC One regional news service.ITV also tried a service, ITV Local, in 2005 which used broadband to provide news, weather and other services for two schemes first in Brighton and Hastings. However, the service was closed in March 2009 due to the state of ITV plc finances.
The new proposed service
Following the election, the coalition government's culture secretary Jeremy Hunt put forward proposals for local TV in the UK.It is proposed that:
- Cities, towns and other areas of upwards 200,000 people should each have their own daily local television news service;
- the services should start in 2012/13;
- that people should be able to find a local TV service for their locality on channel 6, or 106 on cable, satellite and Freeview, as well as online;
- There should be a "national backbone" sustaining service for the channel to pool advertising sales, programme buying and back-office functions.
Help with TV/radio stations?
In this section
Sunday, 6 March 2011
KMJ,Derby: It could very well be that there are three services, one each for Nottingham, Derby and Leicester.
MUX7 would probably be able to carry three SD local services if required.
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Monday, 7 March 2011
Wouldn't it be essayer to put this on a red button service then you could chose the local news service you want to watch, this would solve the problem of people living in one region that get there signal from a neighbouring transmitter.
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Ian: No, the point is to provide a local TV channel using the Interleaved Frequencies, not an interactive service.
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So all the people in Leicestershire for example that have to get there TV from Sutton Coldfield will have to put up with a local service that has nothing to do with where they live.
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Ian: No, they won't see anything. The interleaved frequencies have tiny coverage areas.
They services will be on YouView, on cable and on satellite too, in addition to the limited Freeview coverage.
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Tuesday, 8 March 2011
But the same thing sometimes happens on satellite and cable and unless all regions will be available a lot of people will be left with a local service that doesn't represent them, which is why I think a selectable red button service would be far better.
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Well of course not because that would make sense wouldn't it! I hope it works, but I wont be holding my breath.
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Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Ian: No, it makes no sense whatsoever. Please look at the coverage maps on Interleaved Frequencies maps | ukfree.tv - independent free digital TV advice .
The coverage is local, not part of a "normal" multiplex with wide area coverage. This is not a "regional opt out", it is a local transmission.
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Thursday, 31 March 2011
Stuart O.
8:26 PM
Wrexham
8:26 PM
Wrexham
In correspondence to: Ian - Saturday 5 March 2011 10:36PM: "Can't see Sky moving Sky1 from channel 106."
I was going to add to that: I hate Channel 4 being on 117 in Wales. I wouldn't mind if 104 was Channel 4/S4C in Wales and 106 was S4C/Channel 4 in Wales.
Though if this Local Channel 6 goes ahead, it would have to be 104/107 and 106 being Channel 6. 108 could be Sky 1 or if Channel 6 doesn't go ahead, 107 could be Sky 1.
Saves having to go to the 2nd page of 10 channels (111-120) to find Channel 4 listings.
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Stuart's: mapS's Freeview map terrainS's terrain plot wavesS's frequency data S's Freeview Detailed Coverage
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