London Local TV licence award to the Evening Standard's London Live

Published on 4th February 2013 at 14:13 by Brian Butterworth on UK Free TV

The London Live channel, which will appear on Freeview channel 8, Sky 117 from "next spring", and will run for twelve years. The London channel is expected to cover around 4 million homes, the largest reach of all the new local TV services.

Owner, Mr Evgeny Lebedev said (see   A historic day for the Standard and London as capital gets its own TV station - London - News - London Evening Standard ) : "I am absolutely delighted that Ofcom has awarded us this opportunity to give Londoners their own high-quality local television channel.

Our excellent team of journalists in the capital have the best contacts, knowledge and understanding of the London scene. Through the Evening Standard and Independent, we have proved time and again that we can deliver fast, accurate, high-quality breaking news, features and analysis, and we are looking forward to applying these skills to London Live.

Our success in this bid is a testament to my management team here and the staff across both newspapers."



See also  Local television on Freeview maps

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Rog
Saturday 9 February 2013 3:19AM Hinckley

Am I being naive but I seem to remember the Act to bring in commercial radio and the Act to introduce commercial television (in the 1950's) specifically excluded the printed media/ press from having an interest in TV or Radio ? So presumably this firm ruling has been 'forgotten' to suit certain interests ?

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Briantist
Saturday 9 February 2013 1:06PM

Rog : In the 1950s there was such limited bandwidth, that there was very little ability for competition.

Today, there are huge numbers of websites, newspapers (free and paid for), commercial radio stations that it is very hard for a media company to dominate.

Ofcom has done quite a lot of work on measuring media plurality for the Leveson Enquiry.

You can read their report here -  http://stakeholders.ofcom….pdf .

So, to answer your point, the "firm ruling" has not been forgotten, but the media landscape has change and the laws have changed to match.

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Briantist
Saturday 9 February 2013 1:08PM

... the intro mentions:

• Plurality matters because it makes an important contribution to a well-functioning
democratic society through informed citizens and preventing too much influence
over the political process.

• We have defined plurality as a) ensuring there is a diversity of viewpoints
available and consumed across and within media enterprises and b) preventing
any one media owner or voice having too much influence over public opinion and
the political agenda.

• Plurality needs to be considered both within organisations (i.e. internal plurality)
and between organisations (i.e. external plurality).

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KMJ,Derby
Saturday 9 February 2013 2:00PM

Rog: Remember that this is an additional TV station which will add to the content available from established broadcasters who are still independent of the press. It would be a pity to ignore the offerings of a team of competent journalists, especially, as in the current economic climate the most efficient way of supplying news is to use the resources of local papers or existing TV/radio stations, such as STV in Scotland.

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Charles Stuart
Saturday 9 February 2013 2:44PM Bristol

I'm fairly sure that the Communications Act 2003 changed the rules on cross ownership so that any one proprietor was limited to a maximum holding of 20% across all media, made up of any mixture.

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The Legend
Monday 11 February 2013 10:04PM St. Albans

As Hemel Hempstead has been identified as technically feasible local TV area, does that mean 'London Live' won't be appearing on the Pimlico transmitter? How about the other large CP relays and smaller scale transmitters?

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Charles Stuart
Wednesday 13 February 2013 12:05PM Bristol

As I understand things, London Live will transmit only from Crystal Palace. If you can't receive Crystal Palace transmissions, you'll have to turn to cable or satellite to receive the station. As I understand the things I've read, there are no plans for any form of single frequency network.

From the larger relays, Guildford is on the phase two list to get its own local TV station.

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