London Live, the capital’s local TV station owned by the Lebedev family, made an operating loss in its first year of operation.
The station went live on March 31, 2014 and after a shaky start is beginning to build an audience.
May 2015 delivered the best ever month for London Live with 2.5 million adults watching the channel, almost 200,000 more than in April 2015. It is now ranked as London’s 21st channel in terms of audience reach, ahead of 5USA, Sky News, Watch, ITVBe, Quest and Comedy Central.
Tim Kirkman, Chief Operating Officer, London Live said: “We launched a quality channel after building the complete broadcasting chain from scratch and our agile approach during our first year has seen us evolve the channel, focusing investment on the most popular programming and ensuring a financially sustainable cost base for the business. Following consultations with Ofcom, we have also benefited from a number of modifications to licence requirements, which have enabled us to further boost our offering for viewers.”
The company anticipates losses for the current financial year ending September 2015 will be reduced by some 50%.
