Guildford, Barnstaple and Luton are among 11 further locations which are set to get local TV stations after a new round of licence applications was announced by Ofcom today.
Bidders have until 7 January 2014 to make their case for winning access to channel eight on Freeview to broadcast local news and other content.
Local TV is to receive £40m in funding from the BBC over the first three years – some £25m will go towards creating the broadcasting infrastructure with a further £5m a year to help subsidise programming.
The first 19 local TV licences have already been awarded and the stations are set to start broadcasting in spring 2014.
All the existing local TV bids include a substantial amount of journalism content which will be provided by a mixture of professional journalists and students in many cases. Ofcom says that even the smallest local TV bidders must be prepared to provide at least seven hours a week of original news programming.
In June Ofcom advertised seven further local TV licences for Bangor, Cambridge, Middlesbrough, Mold, Scarborough, Swansea and York. It has received 10 applications for these (with at least one for each location) and the winning bidders are expected to be announced "soon", an Ofcom spokesman said.
Ten further local TV locations are expected to be advertised over the course of the next year.
Ofcom is currently consulting on whether to merge the local TV patches of Luton and Bedford, and Gloucester and Malvern.
The local TV licences advertised today are as follows:
- Barnstaple
- Basingstoke
- Derry/Londonderry
- Gloucester
- Guildford
- Limavady
- Luton
- Maidstone
- Plymouth
- Reading
- Salisbury
The following local TV licences have already been awarded:
- Belfast: NvTv
- Birmingham: City TV Broadcasting
- Brighton & Hove: Latest TV
- Bristol: Made in Bristol
- Cardiff: Made in Cardiff
- Edinburgh: ETV
- Glasgow: GTV
- Grimsby: Lincolnshire Living
- London: London Live
- Leeds: Made in Leeds
- Liverpool: Bay TV Liverpool
- Manchester: YourTV Manchester
- Newcastle: Made in Tyne and Wear
- Norwich: Mustard
- Nottingham: Notts TV
- Oxford: That’s Oxford
- Preston: YourTV Blackpool & Preston
- Sheffield: SLTV/Sheffield Live
- Southampton: That’s Solent
More details about the latest round of local TV licences are available from Ofcom here.
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