Fewer than 500 people an hour tune into £630,000 Livingstone London TV channel

10.40.04am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 14th Jun 2005

New figures revealed today by the London Assembly Liberal Democrats show that in the last four months the 24-hour London TV channel, funded with £630,000 of Londoners taxpayers money, was watched on average by just 481 people an hour.

An analysis by the London Assembly Liberal Democrats of the British Audience Research Board (BARB) viewing figures since the 24th January 2005 shows that:

· On average 11,555 people watch London TV every day for more than 3 minutes

· Teletext Holidays and Manchester United TV have more viewers

· On the best weekly ratings in the 18 most recent weeks analysed, London TV was 159th out of 166 channels monitored by BARB

Commenting on the viewing figures, Liberal Democrat Culture Spokesperson, Dee Doocey, said:-

"Serious questions must be asked of the Mayor as to why more than half a million pounds of Londoners money has been spent on a TV channel watched by almost no-one.

"This is more a case of LondOFF TV rather than LondON TV. Putting this overly expensive and under watched TV channel on air has deprived many other valuable cultural projects of much needed funding.

"The Mayor believes that advertising revenue will eventually fund London TV rather than the taxpayer. But why would anyone would want to spend their clients money on buying airspace on a channel that almost no-one tunes into?"