Local TV

Local TV: Sanity or Vanity?

This November Made in Leeds TV will be celebrating its first anniversary. The station is one of more than thirty in the UK to have been awarded licences by OFCOM, but what impact are they making on the media landscape and within communities… and are they a new voice or an outdated concept?

As part of Leeds Trinity University’s annual Journalism Week, the Royal Television Society and the Radio Academy will be holding a special debate to try and find some answers.

Taking part will be:-

Local TV: Here to stay

If you were to believe the headlines, you might think that local television – dismis­sed by some as "Jeremy Hunt’s pipe dream" – was dead in the water. The former Culture Secretary’s vision, scorned by most broadcasters, was bulldozed on to the statute book four years ago and the first channels are now 18 months old.

Hunt thought it wrong that Birmingham, Alabama, had eight local-TV ­stations while Birmingham, UK, had none, and secured some funding and the Channel 8 slot on Freeview (in England, at least) to help the new stations get established.