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Norwich-based Mustard set to be second new UK local TV station to go live, on 24 March

By Press Gazette

Archant-owned local TV station Mustard has revealed a launch date of 24 March on Freeview channel 8.

It is one of 19 local TV channels launching around the UK this spring under a Government-backed scheme which is subsidised by £40m from the BBC licence fee in the first three years.

Mustard says it will the second local TV channel to go live. Grimsby-based Estuary TV has been broadcasting since November. Lebedev-backed station London Live is due to launch on 31 March.

Mustard TV managing director Fiona Ryder said: “We want to redefine what people think of as local television. We hope to engage the community in ways that other stations covering wider patches just can’t.

“We will put Norfolk and Norwich at the heart of everything we do, celebrating the best of our county and concentrating on the issues that really matter to our communities.

“As well as being informative and entertaining, Mustard TV will provide a new voice for the people of Norfolk.”

Managing director of Archant East Miller Hogg said: "Mustard TV is owned, produced and managed in Norwich for the people of Norwich and I am proud that Archant which already publishes the main newspaper and magazine media in Norwich since 1845 can now boast in 2014, some 169 years later, television as part of our latest media offering to our audience and advertisers.”

Archant said that the station will be available in up to 162,000 homes in Norwich and surrounding areas, "from Cromer to Attleborough and from Dereham to Acle".

There will be hourly weekday news bulletins, from 5.30-10:30pm, and it will also feature daily magazine programme the "The Mustard Show’ offering a “daily dollop of all things Norfolk” on weekday evenings at 6.15pm.

Programmes promised in the first week include: Splinter Bike, a documentary charting how two men from Norfolk set the first official world land-speed record on a bicycle built entirely from wood, and Archive Half Hour – a six-part series produced in association with the East Anglian Film Archive and Fragment Films.

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