Consortium Channel 6 has announced that it will put forward a bid to operate the cadre of new local TV services, as envisaged by Culture, Olympics, Media, Sport (and local tv) Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Under Mr Hunt’s vision, which was announced last month, a central broadcaster would deliver a new national service, with guaranteed opt-ins reserved for local content specific to each broadcast area.

The ambitious plans from Channel 6, which is headed up by former Mirror Group executive Richard Horwood, would see the first flotilla of nine channels – targeted towards big cities and conurbations with populations over 200,000 – launched in 2013, with the total number boosted to 39 by 2017.

Describing the plans in an article published in the Guardian, Mr Horwood said that “…programming will be supplied by independent producers and will be aspirational, with a strong entertainment element”. 

Oh good – nothing like Channel Five, then.  What a relief.

Funding for the project would be a mixed bag of advertising, with an estimated 20% coming from local sources specific to each broadcast area, and the rest being made up from the far greater (although already stretched) pool of national advertisers, in order to make the venture commercially viable. 

While initial plans refer to a service on Freeview, it is not to say that the Government has entirely discounted the possibility of levering this new channel into the Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) of subscription platforms, such as those provided by BSkyB and Virgin Media.

Should this happen – perhaps through a compulsory mandate, as with the five existing terrestrial channels – it raises an interesting question regarding the location of this new channel on the EPG, particularly following the recent re-jig by Sky. 

The five leading slots are already taken by our beloved national broadcasters (and Channel 5) and I can’t imagine that Sky, for instance, would want to voluntarily displace flagship Sky One from the sixth position on its EPG in favour of a new national/local channel mash up.

Would Mr Hunt’s baby, therefore, provide enough of a public service to earn itself a seat at the top table, and given the demise of local newspapers over the last few years, would the same content via a different platform prove to be successful?

The report by Nicholas Schott’s independent advisory panel seems to think that it could, at least in principal and with a more realistic plan.  However, in order to prove its worth, content would need to be both “low cost and high quality”.  No pressure, then.

Not quite sharing Mr Hunt’s unfettered ambitions, Mr Horwood himself has indicated the limitations of such a service in an article on mediaweek.co.uk, with levels of local programming achieving “maybe two hours a day in the largest cities, down to around 15 minutes in less populated areas”. 

Viva la revolution!

With the country stumbling out of a recession like a drunk trying to cross a dual carriageway, an increasing emphasis being placed on thinking ‘bigger’ and the unstoppably pervasive nature of the internet, don’t we really need to ask what the point of all this is going to be?