Ofcom squeezes local TV into 20 cities' tight White Spaces Ofcom has identified 20 locations where it believes local telly, broadcast in White Space, is technically possible, and stands the best chance of being commercially viable. The list includes Birmingham and Glasgow as well as Norwich and Leeds, but it's the London site which will most likely be contested by bidders. Those …
Its a huge joke... we are not on the list for decent broadband.. and now we will have to subsidise the establishment of local TV for Cities out of our TV tax?
Someone take the collective worthlessness called OFCOM round the back and put them out of our misery! They're neither use nor ornament as my old Yorkshire Aunt used to say.
The DCMS is already planning to take licensing powers away from local authorities (except for alcohol) on the grounds, it would seem, that local investment decisions are better taken by national and international corporations.
This is just another example of the same thing - the government dictating how business should operate in local areas regardless of the views of the people who live there.
When any government talks about decentralisation, regionalisation, deregulation or local accountability you can be pretty sure that the words "on our terms" is buried somewhere in the small print.
Ironically, when ITV companies used to make local programmes, they were quite popular - but with the wrong demographic. It'll take more than £15m to make up for the lack of ABC1s.
Wait... so we've spent years clearing up frequencies to pave the way for digital TV (where we can literally have hundreds of channels and broadcast local ones only locally if necessary), only to fill up those frequencies we're now *not* using with local TV broadcasts that "shouldn't" interfere?
I'm confused. And we *have* to spend money to make local TV happen? What exactly is going to be on the "London" channel that's not on any of the other digital channels and/or isn't covered in the 5-minute "local news/weather" section of the normal news (Do TV channels even still have that? I haven't watched a news program in about a decade).
My concern is mainly that there's enough dross on TV to activate my internal spam filter without creating more and every channel I don't watch is one I'm paying for anyway. Is local TV really necessary when most nights the national news can't even do a decent broadcast without delving into celebrity gossip and finding a cat with 18 toes (which is one of the main reasons I stopped watching "everything" news broadcasts and started researching the things *I* found interesting instead)?
I don't want DibleyTV. Nor, I suspect, do most people in the areas mentioned. The Welsh are probably crying out for more Welsh programmes though - I'd rather they had them, so long as they get watched, than some local "reporter" telling me about a one-legged duck.
We don't have a shortage of channels. Those days passed the second Sky entered the analogue TV market and Freeview etc. followed. What we have now is too much junk, repeats, adverts and pointless programs that don't get viewers. I don't see how local TV will remedy that situation at all.
> What exactly is going to be on the "London" channel that's not on any of the other
Kiss[1] Forum? Battlestar Galactica Forum?
> What we have now is too much junk, repeats, adverts and pointless programs
Indeed. Content is expensive, broadcasting is (comparatively) cheap.
You know we've got too little content to spread around when the Top Gear repeats on BBC2 are older than the ones on Dave. But they keep on adding new channels...
Vic.
[1] And J. Geils
What we dont need is MORE tv! Why not spend the licence money on some quality stuff instead of celebrity dross and yet another talent show?
No wonder you gifted F1 to Sky.
Why cant I opt out of this tv tax as it pays for a broadcaster that is totally irrelevant in my household?
Thats why Comms in this country are such a joke.. OFCOM has it fingers in too many pies... and an altogether darker place... jack of all trades.. master of none... Abolishing OFTEL etc really was a step backwards
It was called ITV
Either the frequencies shouldn't be used at all (as "White space" is a myth) or use needs to be very very carefully licensed. With immediate and permanent closure if any viewers of "main" stations are affected by co-channel interference.
The Wales/Kippure experience in SE Ireland and parts of Wales shows that DTT is less resilient to Co-channel interference than Analogue. The time for "White Space" experimenting was from 1969, not now.
I see that Grimsby is on the list.
It was one of the pioneers for Cable TV, and had local TV on that.
It didn't work out then. I'm not at all sure that it will work out now. At least, with several miles of Lincolnshire Wolds between me and Grimsby, I can't see it as a problem.
Oxford has it's own local TV service on UHF called Channel 6.
It was watched by the mothers of aspiring television presenters and the company existed to provide training for aspiring television presenters and news readers (on their way to 24 hour shopping network contracts).
You can imagine the number of viewers it got.
A local TV outfit making the news for (sh) ITV however, that could be interesting....
I have cable and several hundred channels to access but the content is simply not there. Most is simply recycled tripe anything the least bit notable is available on three different channels .We simply do not need more channels we need fewer and ditch the endless repeats for new material
rather than further diluting the revenue stream .
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