Birmingham’s City TV has become the first of Jeremy Hunt’s ambitious network of local TV stations to go bust.
Ofcom awarded the local TV licence for the UK’s second largest city to local player City TV Broadcasting in November 2012, rejecting high-profile consortiums backed by heavyweights including former BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons.
The company, also known as BLTV, appointed adminstrators on Friday to try and find a buyer for the local TV licence.
Duff & Phelps has approached a number of other local TV licence holders via email with a “business opportunity”.
The email says: “The joint administrators are seeking expressions of interest from parties interested in acquiring the licence and who believe that they are likely to obtain the consent of Ofcom for any transfer.”
An attached “Business Lite Memo” states that the business has “no studio premises or broadcast equipment”, despite having had almost two years to get the operation up and running.
In its submission to Ofcom, City TV, which is run by former Birmingham City Council PR chief Debra Davis, had promised to be the first of local TV stations to launch with an on-air date of between Easter and June last year.
Last month MP Steve McCabe tabled a number of parliamentary questions to try to find out the state of City TV.
This prompted rival Made Television, which has secured the most local TV licences, to confirm interest in snapping up the licence if City TV failed to launch by its 6 November deadline.
Made TV is chaired by former BSkyB executive and Top Up TV co-founder Ian West, and counts former Emap chief executive Tom Moloney as a director.
Ofcom has so far awarded 30 licences, with services in Glasgow, Grimsby, Nottingham, Norwich and London on air. Brighton is due to launch later this month.
Last month London Live, which is owned by Evgeny Lebedev, applied to Ofcom to slash the amount of local programming it produces just four months after launch.
Former culture secretary Hunt’s plan for a UK-wide network of local TV stations has been widely criticised as not commercially viable.
© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited.