Canadian broadcaster plans 160 jobs for local TV
THE Canadian broadcaster bidding for local TV licences in Liverpool, Manchester and Preston says it will hire around 160 staff if successful.
Toronto-based Channel Zero – the only foreign bidder involved in the process – has applied to run eight of the 21 stations available.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that David McKeith, a former senior partner at accountancy firm PwC in the North West, is leading the Manchester bid for Your TV, which is also aiming for eight licences.
Channel Zero’s model is based on winning clusters of licences to keep costs down, so it hopes to win the three available in the North West, or Sheffield and Leeds, or Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle.
“That’s our ideal,” said president Cal Millar, who told TheBusinessDesk.com that a single location would also be viable.
“All of the cities, especially Manchester and Liverpool, are big enough to support dedicated local news stations,” said Millar.
“The majority of news is all very London-centric. We find it very enlightening that most people who believe local TV won’t work are based in London. When we go to the regions people see there is tremendous potential.”
Channel Zero already runs local news stations in the Canadian cities of Hamilton and Victoria which have populations of 700,000 and 500,000 respectively. It also has an English language service in Montreal.
In the UK it plans to attract advertisers to a live news service – focusing on local, regional and international stories – by day, switching to bought-in entertainment shows in the evening.
“We’re existing broadcasters, this is more of what we do already. We know this works, we just need to do it.”
Millar, who is bidding under the Metro8 brand, would not say how much the business is investing in the venture, but he confirmed it was less than £10m.
Each local TV station will be part-subsidised by a grant from the BBC – about £150,000 in the first year, shrinking to £20,000 by the third year.
“We place no reliance on BBC funding,” said Millar. “That’s not at all part of our business model.”
The regulator Ofcom is expected to award the licences by the end of the year and the stations could be up and running later in 2013.
Channel Zero has revenues of around £50m and employs some 350 staff in the US and Canada.
