Liverpool To Have Its Own TV Channel

Liverpool will boast its own television channel to meet a "huge appetite" for more local information, under government plans unveiled yesterday.

The city is among 65 areas – from London to Bangor, in North Wales – where organizations have been invited to set up "local TV", along the lines of successful stations in the United States and France.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said “Liverpool TV” would serve around 800,000 households, stretching as far as Wirral, St Helens, Widnes and Wigan – initially on Channel Eight, on a Freeview box.

And he sought to quash industry scepticism about the viability of the stations by insisting they could be successful on advertising revenues of just £500,000 – and no state funding.

Mr. Hunt said: "This represents the biggest change in the broadcast landscape for decades. These new, local TV services will be a fundamental change in how people get information about their own communities. There's a huge appetite for local news and information, the length and breadth of the country.

"I want people to be able to watch television that's truly relevant to them, about what's happening where they live and featuring the people they know."

Under Mr. Hunt's plans, bids will be lodged in the next few months and Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, is expected to select an initial batch of 20 channels to be up and running by 2013. However, a study carried out for the Culture Secretary, last year, suggested local television may only be feasible in up to 12 of the largest cities.

Furthermore, local groups – the Culture Secretary suggested they might include entrepreneurs, universities or media companies – must first put forward a sustainable business case.

Mr. Hunt said just over half of the UK's population could be covered by one of the new channels, which will be based around existing transmitter locations. This means some major cities, including Portsmouth and Ipswich, will miss out.

However, they will be required to show only one hour of original news content every day – although Mr. Hunt said that content would be far more local than the regional news currently found on the BBC and ITV. Ministers sliced £40m from the BBC's licence fee grant to pay for the capital set-up costs of the project, which include adapting the transmitters, but each project will have to be self-funding.