UK broadcast regulator has written to local TV channel operators to remind them that local news must remain at the centre of their offering.
I wish someone would threaten that in the US. You wouldn’t believe how much of local newscasts here is national news and regurgitated product press releases. And yet the “local” news runs like ten times per day.
The idea of the local TV project was a good one, ten years ago.
Lowering the barriers to getting content on the air, centralised operations/transmission centres to lower the technical requirement at a local station, it was neat.
The trouble is, the demand for local TV (outside of BBC regional opt-outs) is pretty low nowadays. Content that would have gone on the local news is now hosted online.
So these networks have kinda become zombies, putting out the minimum content required to keep the primo spots in the EPG.I can’t help but feel that this is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Commercial TV is in the toilet as everybody moves to online services. We can see what’s happened with local newspapers disappearing followed not that long later by the national press. It’s great for an unaccountable regulator to pontificate about a requirement for so many hours per day of news, but really does anyone under 60 really need that today? If you want news then you would look at a news source- why would you wait until the next scheduled news bulletin on your channel in an hour or 2 hours time?
