Obituary: London Live

Last Updated 14 January 2025

Obituary: London Live
The London Live logo
After almost a decade on air, the London Live channel will shut down later this month. Image: London Live

"There's such an obvious need for a London-dedicated channel it's crazy one doesn't already exist in the world's most exciting metropolis."

The words of Stefano Hatfield, the first editorial director of London Live — the London-centric TV channel owned by Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev which launched on 31 March 2014, its name beamed onto a bus departure board as 'due'.

In a bid to capture London's incessant eclecticism, London Live — which broadcast from the Evening Standard/Independent offices in Kensington — poured out a stream of shows, many self-commissioned or produced, including Drag Queens of London, CTRL Freaks and Fight Club London. London Live made a genuine go of trying to squeeze what Hatfield called 'the world's most exciting city' into a TV-sized box; skilled journalists, researchers and presenters worked to produce local news, theatre reviews, red carpet interviews, Tube updates, timely documentaries and broadcasts from City Hall. There were also repeats — lots of repeats. Peep Show often played on a loop in the late night slot.

The ongoing joke, of course, was that no one actually tuned in. Three weeks into its existence, London Live was was already suffering from dire Barb ratings, its morning show Wake Up London mustering a measly 2,400 viewers. People in the Londonist office claim they appeared on London Live more times than they watched it.

While YouTube, Instagram — and later, TikTok — went from strength to strength, the concept of a 24/7 TV channel felt archaic, out of touch — something that might've worked in the 1980s or 90s, but not the age of the internet. A year and a half after it first aired, it was reported that London Live had already haemorrhaged £12m. Lebedev, some say, was optimistically trying to ape the success of local TV in the States, but he must have also realised that making money out of London Live was a long shot. If the channel's aim was to be a disruptor (it even had an evening magazine show brazenly called Not The One Show) then no one was in the mood for being disrupted. "What is the point of London Live?" one Redditor bluntly asked  three years ago.

Earlier this month, London Live was bought by Local TV Ltd, who immediately made moves to shut it down. The final broadcast will be on 20 January — two and a half months short of the channel's 10th birthday, and four months after its sister paper, the Evening Standard stopped publishing daily and rebranded to the London Standard. It's remarkable that London Live lasted that long, really. Though the demise of local media is nothing to celebrate, you wonder how many Londoners will notice that it's switched off.