Ofcom announces 20 UK towns and cities to get local TV

London, Brighton & Hove, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Cardiff, Belfast and Grimsby are among the UK towns and cities that are to get a dedicated local TV series within two years, Ofcom has announced today.

The media regulator is proposing 20 specific sites for consultation where local TV is "technically possible and where there is interest in providing a service".

Ofcom said that the towns and cities were selected to cover a range of locations across the UK and a variety of different scales of local TV operation.

The areas are: Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Preston, Southampton and Swansea.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has long held an ambition to create a network of sustainable local TV services across the UK, which he says will improve local democracy and provide a viable alternative to the BBC's local coverage.

He also believes that the UK towns and cities should be able to offer vibrant local TV services similar to those seen in America and other countries.

In a speech earlier in the year, Hunt said that Birmingham in the West Midlands should have the same choice in local news as Birmingham in the US state of Alabama, which has four network affiliates.

The initial plan was to launch a national "spine" TV channel on Freeview for hosting "opt outs" of local TV services, but this approach was officially dropped by Hunt in July.

Instead, the minister intends to allocate a specific kind of digital terrestrial television (DTT) spectrum, known as geographic interleaved (GI) spectrum, to local TV providers to offer services, overseen by a new licensed multiplex company.

GI spectrum is suitable for local TV because certain channels within the spectrum are not used to deliver DTT in selected geographic areas, meaning they can be used for other services.

Ofcom has now identified the 20 areas that "should constitute the minimum rollout requirement for the local television multiplex licence operator".

"Each of these towns or cities is the principal conurbation within the technically-possible coverage area," said Ofcom.

"Some transmission areas cover secondary conurbations too, and where coverage is good enough, we will consider applications for local services targeted at these.

"In addition, we propose to ask applicants for the multiplex licence how many sites they will cover, on top of this minimum. We propose to award the multiplex licence partly based on the extent of this additional coverage."

Ofcom has also handed Hunt a list of additional areas that could support local TV, including: Aberdeen, Ayr, Bangor, Barnstable, Basingstoke, Bedford, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derry/Londonderry, Dundee, Guildford, Hereford, Inverness, Kidderminster, Limavady, Luton, Maidstone, Malvern, Mold, Salisbury, Sheffield, Stoke on Trent, Stratford upon Avon and York.

Further details about the local TV proposals will be laid out by Ofcom in a consultation on local TV licensing this month. The report will be published and then put before parliament for legislation to allow the plans to go ahead.

The government hopes that the first local television licences will be awarded by Ofcom in summer 2012, with the first stations expected to be in operation within the next two years.

Despite the current plan to allocate DTT spectrum to local TV operators, in the long term Hunt believes that local media services should be broadcast over the internet via IPTV.