Quote:
Originally Posted by nodrogd
The vast majority won't bother with Sky, as they will not only have to pay for the satellite slot, but must join Sky's encryption system due to rights issues with some of the programmes they rebroadcast. There are no local channels on Freesat for this very reason.
It must be a massive outlay for just a few thousand viewers. London Live is the only local channel I know of that uses Sky, & with a potential audience in millions rather that thousands this is the only one ever likely too (Excluding possibly STV2).
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As I stated earlier, the Made TV franchises also use Sky but the newer areas such as Teesside and North Wales have not been made available on Sky.
BBC funding of "diary stories" is £150,000 in the first year of operation, reducing to £110,000 in the second year and £40,000 in the third year. As this source of funding dries up and local content commitments are reduced, there will no doubt be further cutbacks.
With many local services merely relaying national commercial services such as TruTV for most of the day, there is little point in using limited resources to repeat this over multiple platforms. It will be interesting to see how these channels develop over the next few years. With local content being reduced to a few hours a week, on demand and internet distribution would probably have been more sensible than the current model.