Media watchdog Ofcom has announced the next phase of plans to roll-out local TV, with the announcement of 28 further areas where licences will be issued.
The regulator has today revealed the locations across the UK where it will advertise local licences later this year, including Aberdeen, Cambridge, Hereford, Luton and Scarborough.
It comes after Ofcom announced the 12-year licence to operate the network “spine” for local TV had been awarded to Comux, a company set up by Canis Media.
The company has beaten off bidders including the BBC to run the network multiplex that the local TV stations will be broadcast on, which will be responsible for building and maintaining the technical infrastructure required.
Successful bidders have already been announced for most of the first 19 areas where local TV will be broadcast and some of these are expected to be on air by the end of the year.
Ministers want to see a nationwide network of local TV stations, some owned by local newspaper publishers, and Ofcom will now seek expressions of interest for 28 new areas later this year.
The 28 new locations are Aberdeen, Ayr, Bangor, Barnstaple, Basingstoke, Bedford, Bromsgrove, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derry/Londonderry, Dundee, Guildford, Hereford, Inverness, Kidderminster, Limavady, Luton, Maidstone, Malvern, Middlesbrough, Mold, Reading, Salisbury, Scarborough, Stoke on Trent, Stratford upon Avon, Tonbridge and York.
In May last year, Ofcom invited applications to run local TV services in 21 local areas and 57 applications in total were received for 19 locations, along with four applications for the local multiplex.
The regulator will also ask for final expressions of interest in Swansea and Plymouth where local licences were advertised last year but no applicants came forward.
The 19 initial areas where licences are being awarded are Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Preston, Sheffield and Southampton.
The successful bidders for 14 of these areas have already been announced, with the rest due in the next few months, and a number of regional publishers have formed partnerships which will see them involved in the new stations.
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In a couple of years there’s going to be one hell of a lot of slightly-used television broadcast equipment up on e-Bay.
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WHY!???! How can they compete? If you sack off the BBC local coverage (not a bad thing), maybe, just maybe, someone might watch this stuff. But otherwise, dear God …
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Scarborough? The town that can’t sustain a daily paper?
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‘Kin ‘ell! Basingstoke TV!
I can hardly wait..
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Oh god , they looked a the USA – it’s not the same.
No doubt the regionals will all pile in, in the hope of impressing the city.
TV is already fragmenting and this just smashes the value to advertisers even more.
Idiocy – end of.
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Would have thought the cheapest way to go would be to trial an internet TV service first and see if there’s demand for this local stuff rather than spending a fortune on a broadcasting licence.
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So local radio, that went well then….
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… and where the hell is Limavady? I’ve never heard of it and Google hasn’t either!
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Re trialling on the internet. Here in Swindon we had the first local tv station. 40 years old this year. We now operate quite successfully on the internet but we consider ourselves community tv, with access, representative structure and accountability – not a miniature itv. See what I mean at http://www.swindviewpoint.com
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Yet again, nothing for the Scottish Borders or Dumfries and Galloway. That takes out a huge area of Scotland – one that ALWAYS gets overlooked. We lost our Regional coverage some years ago when Border TV was “merged” with Tyne Tees despite promises being made about continued coverage. What we have now is abysmal. Just not good enough.
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