London Live isn’t living up to expectations.

London Live was set to be the crowning jewel in the Local TV plan set out and funded by the Culture secretary. These plans, however, look to be on the rocks as London Live records viewing figures as low as zero on several occasions, but it is to soon to judge the fledgling channel?

It was recently reported that funding from the BBC trust for London Live has been halted due to questions over finances. The chief programmer has left and dismal viewing figures seem to re a regular occurrence.

It’s been a shaky start at best for London Live, the 24 hour channel dedicated to London and Londoners. Just to put the issue into perspective, out of the 9 million people that can receive and watch London Live, an average of 2,400 tune into its flagship news programme. 

So what’s gone wrong and is there any hope for the flagship local TV channel? Firstly, let’s not sign the death warrant so quickly, the channel has only been on air for a month and a half and will need time to find its feet and its focus, but there certainly are some glaring issues to be sorted out and some fundamental problems that can’t be avoided.

Has London Live been madfor the every day Londoner?

One of the most obvious problems with their launch was the state of their website. On the first of April, the front page of the Standard carried the announcement that London Live was launching today and gave the channels you can find it on and the website.

As I spend much more time on my laptop than in front of the TV, I decided to checkout the website and watch from there. Expecting to see a range of stories, shows and videos, I was instead met with a nearly blank page, populated with the 3 of the hows that had already aired and a trailer of what was to come on the channel. There was next to no content on the website an launch, which in my eyes is ridiculous if your target audience is young, trendy Londoners who are never off the internet and rarely sit down and in front of the TV for a new channel they know nothing about.

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This leads me to another issue, finding the bloody channel. Unfortunately for London Live, anyone who want’s to watch the new channel must first re-tune their set top box. This presents two problems, firstly, a lot of people won’t know how to do this. Secondly, out of the people who do know how to do this, many of them won’t think it’s worth the effort.

I think this represents the biggest challenge for London Live. If the channel was just there, then many people would curiously tune in and even if 1% of these stuck with the channel, their viewing figures would probably be 5x what they are now. As it is, people have to go that extra step just to be able to watch the channel, which may be a step too far.

Their target audience is another issue. Essentially London Live and saying they want to attract the young, smart, trendy, professional Londoner. That’s  great, but what about the other 8.75 million people in and around London. London Live needs to focus on the needs and issues of a wide range of demographics and cultures if it want’s to succeed.

London is a melting pot of hundreds of different cultures, beliefs and lifestyles, London Live needs to represent all of them if it claims to represent London.

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Let’s look at the positive side though, it was some quirky ideas and some good shows in its line up. Misfits is a well known and award winning programme which is now available on London Live. Drag Queens on London has the opportunity to become a viral hit if it is camp and funny enough. London is full of news and is one of the most talked about cities in the world.

I really want London Live to be a success and be a good channel to watch, but it needs to some programming tackles the issues faced by Londoners every day. Off the top of my head, a show focussed on helping young Londoners buy their first house, under a similar format to Location, Location, Location. This is a programme that would be relevant to a lot of Londoners and is even within their target demographic. You can have that one for free, London Live.

Daniel Pharaoh

Daniel Pharaoh

London Writer and Blogger. Featured in the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times.

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