Held as part of Leeds Trinity University’s Journalism Week, the event brought together Dave McCormack, Chief Operating Officer of the Made TV Group which has four of the local TV licences including Made in Leeds; Matt Freckelton, Managing Director of Hello York the York Local TV station due to launch next year; Chris Johnson, chair of the Local TV Network; and Martin Corrigan, Investment Director of global media agency Mediacom.
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.
