In Broadcast - April 2013 - 42

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 18 - APRIL 2013

N E W S

InVIEW

London Calling: Hyper-Local TV Channels
Local TV is being reincarnated in the UK thanks to a new government-backed initiative. But, will it work?

By
Paul Robson

he owners of the Evening
Standard newspaper recently
won the license to launch one of
the UK’s 19 new local TV services.
Amongst media circles this was
big news. London Live will feature
millions of pounds worth of original
content that will start with news and
current affairs before, eventually,
moving to lifestyle, entertainment,
drama and comedy programming.
Backed by a £5 million marketing
campaign, there’s potential for 18
hours of broadcasting a day plus 33
hyper-local IPTV services, delivering
news and information to different
areas of the capital. Hundreds of
jobs will be created, a new studio

will be built and indies will also get
the chance to do deals for airtime.
It sounds great. My only concern
is that, living as we do in our media
bubble, that the broadcast sector is
the only winner here.
This latest incarnation of local TV
is clearly different from ones we’ve
had before. In the late 1990s, and
I remember it well, everyone got
excited about local TV but it bombed.
In 2013 these new channels will
be broadcast via an independent
multiplex operator on a dedicated
channel on Freeview. This alone
is better than what we had
last time around.
£25 million worth of the BBC’s
license fee has been put aside to
pay for the infrastructure and a
further £15 million is being made
available for content subsidies
over three years.
But let’s be totally honest about
this. Who is going to watch it? And if
no one watches it, how is it going to

Cross-media ownership for local TV

pay for itself? Subsides from Auntie
Beeb will only go so far. Attracting
advertisers is still going to be crucial.
And with potentially small viewing
ﬁgures, however niche or targeted,
most big advertisers will run a mile.
The problem local TV has now is
that viewers have 500 channels to
choose from and those viewers have
got catch-up telly, Youtube, Netﬂx
and LoveFilm to name but a few.
With so many things grappling
for their attention only a few of the
four million London households are
going to bother with local TV for
more than a few minutes a day.
I love the idea that local TV
will offer “a new voice for local
communities, with local perspectives

that are directly relevant to them”
but London is a varied and hugely
transient population and is all the
better for it. Not everyone cares
about their locality. Just look at
the low turnout for recent elections
and how local newspaper sales
have plummeted.
For me, the success of local
TV lies in two things: One, a
national advertising network that
is intertwined with the local TV
content; and two, a solid, accurate
way of measuring viewing ﬁgures.
This will create scale and provide
tangible statistics to satisfy big
brands. Without them, local
TV is doomed.
Paul Robson is the Managing
Director of Medialease, a
specialist finance company
providing asset funding and
f i n a n c e s o l u t i o n s to t h e
b r oa d c a s t t e l ev i s i o n a n d
ﬁlm industries.

InSOUND

Loudness Management For Television Broadcast
By Anthony Wilkins
International Sales Manager
Jünger Audio

here’s an increasing awareness
within the industry about the
loudness of broadcast content and
the desire to maintain a consistent
average level across programmes,
commercials and interstitials.
Standards and recommendations
have been deﬁned including ITU-R
BS.1770-3 creating a consistent
method of measuring the highly
subjective phenomenon of loudness,
and EBU R128 proposing a common
target level for programme loudness
and maximum true peak levels.
There are also a plethora of solutions
both hardware and software based
aimed at measuring and controlling
loudness at all stages from product,
ingest through to playout.

As a broadcaster then, what
is the most effective way of truly
managing loudness? Start as early
as possible in the chain. When
producing content, mix to the
recommended loudness target and
verify and monitor using a device
such as a Jünger M*AP Monitoring
Audio Processor.
However, content received from
external sources should also be
veriﬁed and if required, corrected,
before play out. At ingest, file
based solutions typically operate
faster than real-time and effectively
offer inﬁnite look-ahead. For ﬁnal
transmission, a real-time loudness
manager like the Jünger T*AP is
invaluable as a “gate-keeper”, but

Real-time loudness manager – Jünger T*AP

only if used correctly.
By incorporating a real-time
processor into your automation
system, content from all sources
can be handled appropriately.
For content where the loudness
is known to be compliant, force
the unit into bypass and it will pass
through untouched.
Where the loudness is known and
is not compliant, force the unit into
ﬁxed gain normalisation with true
peak limiting.
Finally if the loudness value is
not known at all, force the unit
into a mode of dynamic loudness
control, again with true peak limiting.
Integration into playout automation
systems can be achieved by
various methods, a simple GPI
contact closure, an HTTP based
API (Application Programming
Interface) or third party protocols
such as L-S-B’s Ember.
Another important factor to bear
in mind if broadcasting material
encoded as Dolby Digital (AC-3), is

Loudness control Jünger T*AP

to ensure that the metadata value
DIALNORM is correctly set.
It is used to apply a scaling factor
in the end user’s decoder and in
order to operate effectively; it must
be set so that it is equal to the actual
programme loudness. A real-time
loudness manager like the T*AP can
incorporate Dolby decoding and/
or encoding and can also perform
automated upmixing in order to
maintain a consistent 5.1 sound
ﬁeld for channels broadcasting in
surround but where legacy content
or inserted commercials are only
available in stereo form.
True management of loudness
therefore is about using the
appropriate technique and solution
at the right point in the chain.

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In Broadcast - April 2013

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