[Neil Jones]

I think anything other than rubber stamping the continuation of the licences is going to be way down the list of priorities of the next government, if it’s not taking any public subsidies. Particularly as any licence extension will presumably take them to the time terrestrial broadcasts are turned off all together.

And if you closed them down on the basis they’re not fulfilling their original remit, you’d also close down ITV and pretty much every commercial radio station in the country.

Yes but there's a difference between ITV and Local TV. ITV at least does regional news and does it well. While it was originally region based, it was also nationally networked for a significant chunk of the time especially in peak time.

This is in stark contrast to most Local TV operations, which promised the earth, delivered very little of it and then went off and delivered even less than that. At least ITV does deliver, most of the local TV operations are supposed to do something like 30hrs a week first run programming, and they're not even doing that.