ANOTHER TV channel is disappearing from screens after more than ten years of broadcasting.
And it will shut down later this year on Virgin Media and Freeview.
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Notts TV is a much-loved local channel serving Nottinghamshire, as well as other parts of the East Midlands including Leicester and East Derbyshire.
The channel largely features productions made around the region, but also showed re-runs of programmes including documentary series Walks Around Britain and classic movies.
It launched back in May 2014.
The independent broadcaster is owned by Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and run by experienced producers and journalists working alongside students.
But the university has announced that it will not seek to renew its broadcasting licence with the regulator Ofcom, which expires in November this year.
“This has provided NTU with an opportunity to consider if Notts TV delivers sufficient benefit to its students at a time when all organisations in and around the public sector are operating with constrained budgets,” the NTU said.
“Whilst students who have had placements with Notts TV have gained significant real work experience, the numbers involved have been too small to warrant continued investment.”
The sad closure comes weeks after a similar project, London Live, was shut down.
London Live, Notts TV and a slew of other local TV channels came about as part of a scheme introduced by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government back in 2011 under then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
London Live’s slot was taken over by a new operator after its demise in January, known as London TV.
NTU hopes another operator might do the same with Notts TV.
Notts TV can only be received by Virgin Media and Freeview viewers in and around Nottingham on channels 159 and 7 respectively.
“We’re incredible proud of everything Notts TV has achieved over the last decade,” said Mike Sassi, interim chairman.
“We’ve broadcast more than 2,500 live news programmes featuring countless local stories, welcomed more than 5,000 Nottinghamshire people into the studio as guests, and our reporters have won national awards for their journalism.
“We’ve also helped to launch hundreds of careers in media across Britain and beyond with our industry training, and held power to account by hosting the BBC Local Democracy Reporting Service.
“We look forward to bringing you the best of what we do over the next few months, and Notts TV would like to thank everyone who supported us over the years.”
Will more channels close soon?
Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun
The BBC announced in 2022 that CBBC and BBC Four would disappear as traditional linear channels in a few years and go digital only via iPlayer.
However, the pair may have had a bit of a reprieve for now, after the BBC’s head of children’s programmes, Patricia Hildago, recently said “it’s really important… that if children still need us on a linear network, we’re going to be there for them”.
When Channel 4 announced the closure of The Box and other music channels it owned in January, the broadcaster hinted that more could come.
At the time the company said it was proposing to “close small linear channels that no longer deliver revenues or public value at scale, including the Box channels in 2024 and others at the right time”.
So which could the “others” be? It really depends what Channel 4 considers “small” but its other channels include More4, E4, E4 Extra, Film4 and 4Seven.
