Broadcasting Committee

Inquiry into Public Service Broadcasting

Who we are

Capital TV is Wales’s first, and so far only, Ofcom-licensed local television station

We broadcast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on analogue TV channel 49. Our signal has been independently verified to reach approximately 220,000 viewers across the city. We broadcast local news, local features and documentaries, movies, local band performances, productions made by local media colleges and programming made by young people under educational training at Media4Group - our majority shareholder

Background

Capital TV is one of a small band of pioneer community-based local broadcast television stations which were awarded "Restricted Service Licences” by the television regulator under the terms of the 1996 Broadcasting Act. These licences permit each station to transmit to specific "restricted” areas - such as towns, cities or to specific local groups like students or ethnic minorities.

Capital TV Cardiff was initially developed by the Cardiff-based production company Merlin Broadcast Ltd and won the contest for the Cardiff licence in 1998. It was allocated the lowest transmitter power and the lowest antenna height of any local station in the UK. Worse still, because of frequency clashes with an ITV relay mast, Capital TV was not allowed to broadcast a full service until 2005 - by which time the audience was already switching-over en-mass from analogue to digital. Unlike the BBC, ITV and S4C, Capital TV - receives no public funding whatsoever. All its funding to date has come from its own shareholders and its slim operational revenues.

Local television is, without doubt, the toughest and most challenging arena in the UK broadcasting industry. In the last ten years many of the pioneer local TV stations have gone out of business. Some stations died for technical reasons, because their analogue transmissions could not reach enough viewers. Some failed because they could not achieve the revenues they needed to cover their operating expenditure. Meanwhile the rapid expansion of digital viewing provided a massive challenge as the traditional analogue audiences melted away.

One by one each of the local TV stations will lose their existing analogue frequencies - and their licences - when digital switchover takes place in their respective areas unless they can find the funding to acquire the new local digital frequencies which Ofcom is to auction-off to the highest-bidders. Capital TV intends to bid for the new Cardiff local digital multiplex when it is auctioned later this year.

We believe it is vital that Cardiff viewers should be able to receive their local television channel on a digital frequency just as easily as they can now select BBC, ITV, S4C and whole panoply of other channels on digital. Local TV also should be available, just like all the other channels, on the Electronic Programme Guide listings. We believe that, with digital transmission, every viewer in Cardiff should be able to receive local television with crystal clear pictures and sound wherever in the city they happen to live.

Public Service Broadcasting Is Local TV "Public Service TV”?

Public Service Broadcasting is usually seen as the exclusive obligation of the "major” broadcasters and is defined, by Ofcom, as "programmes broadcast for public benefit rather than for purely commercial purposes”.

As a local television broadcaster - we don’t think of it like that at all.

We believe the very essence of Public Service Broadcasting is local broadcasting.

After all, the raison d’etre of every Local Television station is, first and foremost, that it is truly local; that it broadcasts material of direct interest and relevance to its local audience, that it covers local events, local institutions, reports local democracy in action, provides local businesses with an effective, economical means of reaching local customers, and - most of all - that it broadcasts local news.

At a time when ITV is attempting to wriggle out of its regional news responsibilities in Wales and is on record as preferring to schedule cheap networked game-shows in place of regional TV news programmes, Capital TV and the rest of the UK’s Local Television Stations are doing their utmost to deliver a service that none of the other TV broadcasters can be bothered to provide - focussed local news.

But if Local TV stations are ever to reach their full potential as Public Service Broadcasters action is needed now on three fronts: -

1. Local Television Stations should be guaranteed transmission capacity on digital terrestrial frequencies so that viewers can find them and view them as easily as they can any other channel.

2. The licensing regime must provide greater security of tenure so that Local Television Stations can sensibly plan for a future beyond digital switchover.

3. The disparity in public funding which exists between Local Television (nil) and that enjoyed by the BBC, ITV, and S4C must be addressed so that there is a more level financial playing-field for all Public Service Broadcasters.

The BBC now receives annual funding of nearly £4 billion. Meanwhile Channel 3/ITV licensees have received massive back-door subsidies by being allowed progressive reductions in their annual licence fees. And in 2008-2009 S4C will receive a grant-in-aid from the British taxpayer of over £98million.

Local Television Stations, on the other hand, receive no public funding at all. Yet it can be argued that their public service output is proportionally as great, and at least as important to their respective communities, as that of the publicly-funded broadcasters.

It is time to ensure that Public Service Broadcasting is recognised as being provided not only by network and regional broadcasters but by local broadcasters too. As a consequence, public funding for PSB output at all levels should now be appropriately re-aligned.