Interview with Jim Grice, London Live News Editor on using VJs

The strengths of a VJ operation are that we can gather much more material than in a traditional way (i.e. using crews)- send VJs out from event to event all day. There is still a quality issue but we can gather stories and send them back quickly so keep our own story count high and cheaper than using agency footage. Our footprint is reasonably similar to ITV and BBC local coverage so we need to be different in our content offer.

We aim to be diverse in our coverage. So we cover stories and events of interest to London’s diverse communities – these can be cultural events like Pride, Diwali etc., but we give prominence to stories that reflect the interests and concerns of London’s different communities, be they identified by geography, culture, religion, sexuality or interest.

Londoners are happy to offer and give us footage- they just send it in. There is definitely a sense of community around what we do-and they get a credit if we use their footage.

Most of what we shoot is using DSLR high -HD resolution.

We do broadcast mobile footage because it is a tool for a different job. Our links to the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers means we have access to their standard reporters who have iPhones and are trained as VJs. So 20 seconds of straight reportage from them works well and gives us a very comprehensive picture of London:  transport problems for example- which we’d never been able to do with our own resources but there is sometimes a quality issue, like a problem with framing and stability of pictures.

I believe there is a future for local TV and London has got a large enough audience, of

8.5million, to prove its validity for growing year on year and becoming financially stable.”