Anyone know what's happening with the Plymouth licence?

Nothing, there were no applicants.

Still waiting to see who wins the overall management deal?

Expected next week.

when is the local london channel going to start..

Looking at the representations that Ofcom have published on their website, there is overwhelming support for the Avanti bid.


Nobody can realistically answer that question, as it hasn't been awarded yet.

I read that the BBC economy in London is 3 times the rest of the UK combined.

And surely it would be more sensible to have MPs and such like more central?
There lots of money syphoned into London.

Interesting, the Avanti bid struck me as the weakest, most unproven and most likely unworkable bid of the lot. They're a technology company just trying to pimp their own wares. Has their proposal actually ever been tested in field trials? From what I can see, it's just far too big a gamble to take, unlike the other bids, there's every possibilty that their system simply wouldn't work in a real world setup.

Their representations struck me as pretty baseless, especially the ones from the MP's, they'd obviously been given the hard sell at a meeting. I'm not surprised the other bidders haven't done more, they have far less to prove.

IMO, Ofcom should be asking the sucessful licencees who they're willing to work with.

And the winner is....

Comux

Not surprised really, I think they ticked the most boxes.

The Comux bid was very impressive, they seem prepared to go the extra mile.

It'll remain to be seen if the licencees are going to take them up on their 'extra services', though.

I'm sure they'll do a good job, they put forward a very comprehensive proposal.

Ofcom are going to ask again for expressions of interest, and re-advertise as part of Phase 2 if they get any.

The extra services are optional. There may be some economies of scale if they are taken up but, ultimately, a decision for each of the organisations.

I remember that ITV franchises often used to be awarded to the "most impressive" bid. Dreams and reality are different creatures. It didn't always work out as expected in ITV. Let's hope for better here!

Remember though, some of the licencees have multiple licences and could therefore benefit from their own economies of scale, in fact I'd imagine that'll be the only way they can make a go of it.

Without digging up old ground, I think the licencees with single sites could find the going very tough, especially once the subsidies dry up.

Indeed and I wouldn't think that STV will be taking up the extra services.

There's no guarantee that interleaved space will even be available for these channels after the next batch of UHF spectrum is reassigned to mobile.

The reach in some areas appears to be limited. Sheffield residents use a variety of transmitters, Sheffield, Emley Moor and Belmont. The local service will only be available on the Sheffield transmitter. It might have been better to include the whole of South Yorkshire with additional coverage from Emley Moor.

Comux seems to be genuinely commited to providing and supporting local tv stations so I'm pleased they won that bid.
However, is there a plan to make sure every single area of the UK is served by a local tv channel because it seems that its not technically possible to achieve this via Freeview in a lot of areas?
I keep hearing about IPTV being mentioned as a way of achieving this in the long term but are there firm proposals for this yet? Can this method definetely cover every single area without exception?

Technically IPTV services could cover every area of the UK - but the financial realities mean this won't happen. The places where it may happen are the likes of Leicester where frequencies aren't available, but there is a large enough population.


Nottingham is the same - the urban area is served from from Nottingham, Eastwood, Waltham, Sutton Coldfield, Belmont and Emley Moor. The Nottingham transmitter area looks to be well served by local TV, but those of us in Waltham land look to have less than brilliant coverage from Waltham (although the whole of south Lincolnshire is covered!), and those using other transmitters are out of luck (although the number of Belmont users dropped in the run up to DSO judging by the drop in aerials pointing that way!)

There are some areas with relatively dense population with no plans for coverage and others with relatively sparse populations being planned. That's the problem with fitting it into interleaved spectrum.

Indeed. Edinburgh too, where a large proportion of users are served by Black Hill. Hopefully, Comux will activate an Edinburgh petal on Black Hill. The initial plans only included a service from Craigkelly.

Similar problems will undoubtedly exist in other areas.

So until the economy recovers there will be areas who won't be getting local tv channels anytime soon because they have neither the spare capacity on their local Freeview transmitter nor a big enough population to make IPTV viable?

Given that IPTV is basically an internet/tv hybrid service and that the internet is already available in virtually every part of the UK -cities, small towns and rural areas- surely it wouldn't be too expensive for every area to make the leap to IPTV? Or is that too simplistic a view to take?

It would be a lot lot cheaper to do a IPTV OTT service - either on MHEG5-IC or and Youview as well as web - and that could enhance the sales of those STB (ie.. all HD Sets are MEHG5-IC equipped) .....
But the last secretary of State had a bee in his bonnet about through the air broadcasting ....

Probably because that's the way most people still watch tv. The local channels will struggle to get viewers as it is but with a niche form of delivery such as IPTV, they would have little chance of success.

Maybe in a few years, when IPTV take up has increased.

I would hope that any licencee worth their salt would be sticking their content up online anyway. Even if it's just setting up a channel on YouTube and embedding the videos back in their website. At least then the videos would be viewable on devices like the Apple TV, XBMC, Windows Media Centre and the like with relatively little fuss.

My parents have a 'smart' TV and already have YouTube and BBC iPlayer on it. Hopefully CoMux could work with the licencees to develop a simple on-demand app for these TV and STB's. Or maybe the BBC could allow iPlayer to provide this content?