London Live - What Would You Do?.
Lee Morris
Posts: 2,824 Forum Member
✭✭✭
Seeing as London Live has run into problems with poor ratings what would you do in order to change it?, from threads I have been reading as well as the Guardian reports although one of the people behind it is it the owner? has said that it is not the finished article yet he is dismissive of the BARB figures which seems worrying.
Does it need some sets or there shows, what about the camera work and what about the overall content of the shows such as Wake Up London, Not The One Show etc?.
1: First and I have said some of this in another thread but I would not target at a certain group, who is it aimed at?. Is it teenage of females of a certain age, so I would target it at as many people as possible.
2: I would change the camera work so it does not look like you are watching a film.
3: For shows I would broadcast a weekly music show live from one of the concert venues for instance not far from Channel 5's studios, I would also broadcast football from the very lower league which is not featured on tv as well as maybe badminton and table tennis from a local sports centre and darts from a local pub.
4: I would make the discussion shows more audience friendly and have a studio audience.
5: I would have a set such as a sofa on the breakfast show and feature a variety of local news stories as well as on the spot reports as well as on the spot travel updates, also you could use traffic cameras as well as the live on screen tube updates.
What would you do - Now over to you.
Does it need some sets or there shows, what about the camera work and what about the overall content of the shows such as Wake Up London, Not The One Show etc?.
1: First and I have said some of this in another thread but I would not target at a certain group, who is it aimed at?. Is it teenage of females of a certain age, so I would target it at as many people as possible.
2: I would change the camera work so it does not look like you are watching a film.
3: For shows I would broadcast a weekly music show live from one of the concert venues for instance not far from Channel 5's studios, I would also broadcast football from the very lower league which is not featured on tv as well as maybe badminton and table tennis from a local sports centre and darts from a local pub.
4: I would make the discussion shows more audience friendly and have a studio audience.
5: I would have a set such as a sofa on the breakfast show and feature a variety of local news stories as well as on the spot reports as well as on the spot travel updates, also you could use traffic cameras as well as the live on screen tube updates.
What would you do - Now over to you.
0
Comments
Odd you can watch anywhere in UK on line yet cannot on here.
It's of no interest to anyone over the age of 30 in London, and even for its target demographic, what interest would it be to anybody outside London ?
Apart from a few people on here, I doubt anyone else outside London gives a hoot about it.
It has some decent enough programming than non-London audiences would watch on other channels (Misfits, The Tube, London's Burning, 2012, Smack the Pony, Peep Show, The Shadow Line, some of the food shows, plays etc) - but the repeats are too regular and the website/EPG doesn't signpost when it's a channel premier either.
It needs something to bring the audience across - without blowing the budget - the hyper-local approach can't work here (unlike on say Estuary TV, Mustard TV, Notts TV) and obviously big name sport is out.
It's got to handle news events and be the place Londoners turn to when a big news story, or something effecting there daily lives, is going on (remember CNN was floundering until the first Gulf War, once people had a reason to tune in it was able to shine and became the go to place for news because of that).
The tube strikes were a chance for it to shine - yet on Tuesday morning (after I'd retuned the hotel tv) it was showing a "special service" on the Waterloo and City (in fact it was showing the same on everything except the DLR and Overgroup) yet it was closed - why not accurate data and visualise it in a different way (e.g. a map showing which lines are open rather than just reading them off a monitor meaning you may as well be listening to BBC Radio London?). Anyone giving it a shot on Tuesday morning to see if it could help them get to work would have been disappointed - and this is the sort of stuff that Local TV should be able to focus on which the likes of BBC ONE London can't.
I know that London is big but it's not *that* big - of course that should say 10 million people!
Ideally I would of liked a 24 hour news channel for London but it is not commercially viable. I certainly revamp the news & current affairs except platform 8 which has been the standout programme in that department.
Monday
1700 5 o'clock live. Regional news, magazine
1800 London's Burning
1900 Tonight,. Phone in / chat show
1945 Open Access.
2000 Food Junkies
2030 Hidden London, with Robert Elms
2100 The Shadow Line
2200 London news
Wednesday.
1700 5 o'clock live
1800 London's Burning
1900 Tonight
1945 Open Access
2000 Capital Buildings with Max Hutchingson.
2100 London fire. World war 2 drama.
Friday
1700 5 o'clock Live
1800 London Weekend, whats on guide to the weekend
1830 ITFF. Music & fun to start the weekend.
2000 The friday football show, with Danny baker
2100 Film, Notting Hill.
London has a very specific problem when it comes to local TV. It is hard to make it feel local when the national broadcasters are so London centric. People don't feel the need for something extra that reflects the local culture. I guess it could be done by going local on a borough by borough basis but that isn't going to pull in a wide audience. Instead they have gone for the hipster "culture" demographic, which I suspect doesn't contain as many people as they think it does. Oh, and people who can't get enough of the all important four-twits-talk-rubbish-round-an-oddly-ugly-table format.
So what do we do instead? The challenge is to turn out lots of good content at almost zero cost. The answer is students. Or rather, the answer is students, London's academic institutions and London's cultural institutions. Organisations like Tate, the Natural History Museum and others turn out a lot of video for their websites and could turn out more if there was a wider outlet for it. Let a few media students edit it up and you have TV programmes. Universities already have internal Radio and TV stations. Some of that stuff has to be better than London Live, even if it is four random academics around a slightly less ugly table. Universities and Student Unions put on gigs. Record them and you have a programme. Every prof in London probably imagines they could stand up in front of a camera and make a documentary on their pet subject. Let them try. Some of them will be broadcastable even if most are not. In short, you leverage a lot of existing talent and content that currently goes unseen and you get it all done for free by media studies students who want real world experience on their CVs. I am not saying it would make a big profit but it could cover its (minimal) costs and produce genuinely diverse and interesting programmes.
Closing it down is a rubbish suggestion. It has only been running a month or so, no business returns a profit in that short amount of time, and certainly with TV channels it takes time for them to build up an audience.
If the London region for ITV was considered to be too large for only one operator to have control of, even though there is a lot more competition now there is no reason why a channel for London shouldn't at least break even.
You've described the sort of thing a lot of the non-London local channels are planning to do.
Old Eastenders
The Bill
Grange Hill
Love thy Neighbour
On the Buses
As far as non news is concerned I disagree. I admite its some while back but LWT did some good programmes aimed at London & London only like the 6 O'clock show.
Local tv in general should be aimed at all age groups or as many people as possable.
News is the problem as many are just news items from the network. When there are it is often 'Camden, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham & Westminster but when do you see Kingston, Hillingdon or Sutton?.
I agree. I would love to watch this channel but I'm not being targetted as I'm not a young hipster and I don't live in East London, Camden etc...
They don't seem to understand that potential viewers actually live in those place names on their morning travel update board such as Ealing, Sutton, Bromley etc... How about a bit less about a new bespoke coffee shop in the east and a bit more about what's going on in the 'uncool' outer boroughs?
Which is what they are doing - Londons Burning, The Tube, Twenty Twelve, Misfits....
- Add some user generated content shows e.g. student shorts, viral clips, Interactive phone ins etc
- A topical chat and discussion show.
- Coverage of London based sports e.g. wrestling, football, mma
- Show classic London based TV such as AbFab, AsIf, Bad Girls, The Bill, Family Affairs, London Bridge, Eastenders and more.
There's a few more things I'd do but this forum would hate my ideas:D
And keep the same on for the evening, the same amount of people will watch it as do now.
It's barely SD!