Estuary TV, the UK’s first Local TV station, will launch tomorrow in Grimsby on Freeview channel 8 and Virgin Media channel 879.
It’s the first station to be launched as part of the government’s Local TV project and will be available in over 270,000 homes across Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Kingston upon Hull.
Programmes available on launch will include Voxx, a youth-oriented talk show and On the Bench, providing coverage of sports from a local perspective.
Read Recombu Digital’s guides to Local TV and Local TV in GrimsbyThe last technical challenges have been completed by Digital UK and Comux who are overseeing the rollout of Local TV.
All Freeview customers and other digital terrestrial viewers in the region need to do is to retune from November 26 onwards to pick up the channel. Virgin Media customers won’t need to do anything besides tune in to channel 879.
Jonathan Thompson, Chief Executive of Digital UK, said: ‘We are delighted to support the launch of local TV for Freeview viewers and look forward to working with Comux as more services are rolled out across the UK.’
All local channels in England and Northern Ireland will be listed at position 8 in the programme guide on digital terrestrial TV. Local channels in Scotland and Wales will be available on Freeview channel 26 on account of BBC Alba and Channel 4 occupying the channel 8 slot in these regions. Scottish and Welsh Local TV channels were originally going to occupy the channel 45 slot.
Estuary TV’s shows will be produced by the Grimsby Institute which owns the channel. As well as broadcasting original locally-produced content every week, Estuary TV will update the News section of its site with fresh stories every day.
Episodes of TV shows, such as Voxx have been uploaded to YouTube, giving viewers a taste of what to expect from Estuary TV.
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