Welcome to the golden age of local TV

Journalism is about to go through a momentous change. Ofcom, the communications regulator, has awarded the first 19 licences in the government's plan to roll out local television across the UK. The imaginatively named local digital television programme services, L-DTPS, are set to have a huge impact.

For the first time in a generation there will be a new network broadcasting to a local audience. News and journalism are at the heart of it.

The stations have been given plenty of help to make sure they succeed. They have a prominent position on digital terrestrial television (DTT), broadcasting on Freeview Channel 8, snuggling right between BBC Three and BBC Four.

Transmission costs are minimal; the BBC licence fee will provide £25m to pay for the set-up and the initial fees. There will also be help with content - the BBC guaranteeing to buy a set number of stories each week.

There is little doubt the stations could prove a massive boost to a local and regional media industry, sadly in decline. There will be new jobs for journalists and the chance to create digital operations with multi-skilled teams, working across all platforms. Newsrooms that can challenge authority and help restore a strong media are so desperately needed in any democracy. It is vital that councils, the police and National Health Service are placed under scrutiny. These new stations can help do just that.

There are many distinguished doubters. For instance, Professor Roy Greenslade commented just after the plans were announced by the then culture secretary: "Jeremy Hunt's vision of ultra-local television is hopelessly idealistic. Clearly, he means well because he wants it to enhance democracy. But do the public want it? Are any mainstream media owners, in broadcasting or newspapers, clamouring to launch it? ...and how will it be funded?"

He was writing in the London Evening Standard. Ironically, its owners have won the L-DTPS licence for London.

The regional newspaper groups are now putting a great deal of effort into video. Many of the major groups are partners or part of the consortiums that have won the local TV licences. Trinity Mirror with Made TV, which have four of the licences in Leeds, Tyne and Wear, Cardiff and Bristol. Johnston Press with Solent TV. Local World with Nottingham TV, while Archant owns Mustard TV in Norfolk.

They are also putting video at the heart of redesigned websites. Amongst the most interesting is what the new company Local World is doing. It was launched in January 2013, when it was created as a joint venture, bringing together more than 100 regional and local titles including the Nottingham Post and Cambridge News from the Daily Mail and General Trust’s Northcliffe Media and Iliffe News and Media.

Speaking at the Westminster Media Forum in May 2013, its chief executive, Steve Auckland, outlined how digital was the future of the company. Mark Sweney reported for the Guardian: "Auckland said that following a relaunch of its local newspaper websites the aim is to see the amount of online content rise from 5,000 to 100,000 pieces uploaded a day, and for daily user numbers to grow from 600,000 to 2 million… The goal is that by some point in 2015 declining print revenues, currently dropping by 6% year on year, will be compensated for by growing digital income."

Johnston Press is another company pushing ahead. In January 2013, Ashley Highfield, its CEO, announced plans to launch a series of ‘mini ultra-local TV stations’ for some of the small communities it serves. He commented: "We are going to create a lot more video content, a massive amount more in the next couple of years, really local video content. All of our journalists are being issued with smartphones, our websites will be full of really local good quality videos and I would like to see us create mini ultra-local TV stations for some of the smaller communities that aren’t served and shouldn’t be served by the BBC."

With newspapers reviving and going digital, the new local TV stations, the BBC, Sky and ITV, not to mention the network of hyperlocal bloggers and websites, it can be argued that we are on the cusp of a golden age of local journalism.

Why did it take so long?

This post was adapted from a chapter in What Do We Mean by Local?, edited by John Mair with Richard Lance Keeble and Neil Fowler (Abramis, 2013).