Evening Standard awarded London local TV licence

The London Evening Standard has been awarded a licence to run local TV in London, with content provided by the newspaper's newsroom.

In an announcement this morning, regulator Ofcom said it had awarded the London licence to ESTV Ltd, the new television arm of the London Evening Standard, which along with the Independent, is owned by Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev.

The channel will be called London Live and run on digital terrestrial TV 18 hours a day, rising to 24 hours "if and when there is sufficient audience demand", the news outlet said in its application to Ofcom.

Ofcom expects that 4.1 million homes will receive the new channel. Andrew Mullins, managing director of the Evening Standard told Journalism.co.uk he expects the channel to go live in about a year.

The application stated that London Live would launch in September 2013, with that date set when the licence was expected to be awarded last November. Mullins said that the the channel will go live "as soon as we can".

In its application to Ofcom the company said it would draw on the "editorial and commercial resources" of the Evening Standard and Independent.

The application states that the content of London Live will be "100 per cent London-based". and that there are six "strands" of content, including a minimum of four hours of "fresh" news every day.

London Live is calling the news output 'iNews', which will be "rolling live coverage of news; what’s on, business, sport, travel and weather at peak commuter times from a studio in the London Evening Standard newsroom and using live reporting from across the capital".

In the first year 28 per cent of the content will be news, falling to a quarter when the channel moves to 24-hour coverage in year three.

In today's announcement Ofcom said it received five applications to run the local TV service for the capital, which will have the largest reach of all local TV services.

The London licence is the 15th out of a total of 21 local TV licences Ofcom is currently in the process of awarding. Ofcom said it "hopes that some channels may be on air before the end of 2013".

London Live will run on digital terrestrial TV, and will have a presence on www.londonlive.co.uk, which currently redirects to the Standard website.

Ofcom explains that local channels "might also wish to offer their services on satellite, cable and online".

Since inviting applications in May, Ofcom has received 57 applications were received to run local TV services. The regulator awards licences for up to 12 years.

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