At six o’clock every weekday, the title music played and thousands of Cumbrians joined their ‘screen friends’ to hear what was happening in their area. It was as much a part of their everyday life as an early morning cuppa or looking for the Carlisle United score on a Saturday afternoon. But on February 25, 2009, that routine was shattered when Border TV ‘merged’ with Tyne Tees and Border’s flagship news programme Lookaround effectively disappeared from view. And with it went hundreds of viewers as well as the affection and trust of thousands of Cumbrians. Cumbria might not seem like the obvious case to be one of the first local television stations. But in fact it is perfect. Carlisle and the surrounding area is a classic example of an under-served part of the British media landscape. These are voters with no big city axis – 60 miles from Newcastle and 100 miles plus from the North West conurbation. It is Cumbria, separated by hills and valleys, torn by floods, overshadowed by a nuclear power station and on the border with a new Scottish administration, where a local television station could be of most value. Deprived of its ITV coverage, and perched on the edge of the BBC Manchester regional output (as daft as linking Devon to Bristol) this is an area where local businesses have no affordable TV outlet, where dramatic weather conditions can change peoples’ lives, where one-off horror stories like the shootings by Derrick Bird can dominate national headlines nevertheless, and where people deserve proper detailed coverage. Financially this won’t be an obvious proposition but the idea that a local television station could be funded for half a million pounds annually, has opened our eyes to the possibilities. We believe that with relaxed regulation and an imaginative approach to advertising revenue, this is do-able and we were delighted to see Carlisle on the DCMS map of potential stations. We believe that advertiser funded ‘biopics’ about local businesses, along with sponsored programming, could be of value both to businesses and to viewers. We also believe that a new and unique form of new classified ads and personal announcements could form a revenue stream. We believe in an integrated approach with young journalists and entrepreneurs providing expertise in shooting, editing, production, sales and management. The scope for local political coverage is immense, providing a voice for people who get little coverage elsewhere. Local TV for Carlisle is screaming to be done. The area has a strong proportion of high worth individuals with real commitment to the area (unlike in many other places where the rich move in to attractive properties but have no real commitment.) In Cumbria there are people who for generations have amassed relative wealth from agriculture, the haulage business, the energy industry and manufacturing, without moving on. It is an area with deep roots and with people who would be prepared to invest in local identity. At this stage our business plans are ‘work in progress’ to say the least. We don’t even know what form any local TV consortium would take. We are anxious to talk to anyone else who may have an interest, including Cumbrian Newspapers and Scottish neighbours. But we feel that it is vital to put a marker down for Carlisle being in the first 20 licenses. If the top twenty consist only of cities or major towns which already receiving a high proportion of BBC and ITV coverage, with their viability based purely (as in the Schott report) on the most obvious of local revenue sources, then the whole ethos of local television will be a huge disappointment. It should NOT be there to make money by serving those who already served – it should be there precisely for communities like the people of Cumbria who are hungry for their own media identity. The DCMS needs local TV of all types in the first 20 to prove the point that everyone has (where technically possible) an equal chance. Let Carlisle be the area that demonstrates that to the whole country! Background Since the demise of Border Television two years ago it has become abundantly clear that local or even sub- regional news and information is not what is being provided to the 2500,000 residents of Carlisle, Penrith, West Cumbria and its surrounding towns and villages. Many viewers who regularly tuned into Border’s nightly news programme, Lookaround, now never watch the ITV offering. This is in stark contrast to the Lookaround of the 1980s, when the 30 minute programme regularly made it into the region’s top ten (according to the BARB figures) beating off popular soaps like Coronation Street and Eastenders. It was not uncommon for the programme to achieve an audience share of more than 75%. These figures, which were unrivalled by any regional programme and were the envy of the ITV network, prove that the right balance of local news and events will attract, and maintain, viewers. One of the many strengths of Border’s Lookaround was the unique relationship the programme had with its viewers – it was their programme and the presenters were their friends, people they could trust to tell them what they needed to know, informative but at times reflecting the humour of the people. The on-screen faces were more than household names; they were people you knew so well you could stop them in the street for a chat. Or a row. This interactivity with the audience was used to great effect with phone-ins, studio guests, news-related competitions, and general audience participation. It also proved an invaluable source of news with many tip-offs about breaking news coming directly from viewers. This relationship would be re-created and enhanced using social media tools and the widespread existence of mobile phones and video cameras which were simply not as readily available as news gathering tools in the 1980’s and 90s. The area has a unique character and demographic mix, having little in common with its Scottish neighbours to the north, its big city cousins to the east, or even its Lancastrian-influenced towns and villages in the south. The people of Carlisle, West Cumbria and the Lake District form a loosely-bound unit, accounting for around 250,000 of the 500,000 population of Cumbria. The self-contained nature of the area, with many families living their entire lives with 20-30 miles of their place of birth, means there is a hunger for local news. The area provides a rich seam of news and local events – with the industrial belt of West Cumbria including the massive Sellafield nuclear plant; the tourist-laden, picturesque Lake District which inspires TV features at every turn; and the developing, yet historic, city of Carlisle at its apex. Who are we? Lloyd Watson Lloyd Watson is currently a senior manager of a global television agency, based in London. He is a director of the Broadcasting Journalism Training Council, a member of the editorial board of Newsxchange, and a committee member of the Rory Peck Trust. He also judges awards for the BJTC, the Rory Peck Trust and the Royal Television Society, of which he is a member. In addition, Lloyd is one of the world’s most experienced TV trainers having developed a five-day television training course which he has taught to hundreds of TV journalists in more than 30 countries over the last 15 years. Born and bred in Maryport, Cumbria, Lloyd started his career with Cumbrian Newspapers in 1979, leaving as Deputy News Editor of both the Evening News and Star and the Cumberland News, based in Carlisle. In 1987 he joined Border TV, becoming News Editor at the time of the Lockerbie Bombing, Programme Editor and eventually Head of News and Current Affairs. He left Border in 1994 to become Duty Editor of GMTV before transferring to Reuters in 1996, where he is now Editor, Television Production. He still has family living in Cumbria and regularly returns to the county of his birth. Lis Howell Lis Howell was the first woman reporter at Border TV in 1976 and the first female Head of News for ITV, at Border TV in 1986. She won a Royal Television Society Award for coverage of the Lockerbie Bombing. She was the first Managing Editor at Sky News and was launch director of GMTV and Living TV, the latter now being a flagship Sky channel. She has launched the award wining TV Journalism MA course at City University London department of journalism where she is now the Director of Broadcasting and Deputy Head. She is experienced at expert at start-ups. As Senior Vice President of Flextech Communications she was a skilled programme buyer and scheduler, bringing several shows to the UK and in 2000 she went to Harvard University’s Advanced Management Programme. A Liverpudlian, she has a lifelong love of Cumbria where she spent family holidays, and her daughter was born in Carlisle. Lis also writes murder mystery novels set, you guessed it, in Cumbria. She has numerous family, business, and journalistic contacts in the area. Lloyd Watson and Lis Howell September 23rd 2011 .