ACTRESS Patricia Hodge is guest of honour at the official launch of Estuary TV in Grimsby tonight.
As reported, it is the first of 19 local TV stations being launched across the UK, broadcasting on Freeview channel 8.
Local TV was the brainchild of former Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was keen to introduce a US-style local TV network. Most towns and cities in the USA have their own news and entertainment stations.
Licences have also been awarded to Belfast, Nottingham, Birmingham, London, Oxford, Brighton and Hove, Leeds, Preston, Bristol, Liverpool, Sheffield, Cardiff, Manchester, Southampton, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Glasgow and Norwich, with a further 23 processing.
The idea was that the licence fee would help with initial set-up costs, but that advertising packages would maintain the stations.
Executive producer Lia Nici said: "Often we don't realise how innovative we are in Grimsby and actually we're ahead of the game.
"We are the first local Freeview channel to launch and that is a huge accolade for the creative industries in our region.
"The key to the work we do is training. People come from all over the globe to train here because they can't get this type of training anywhere else and we will be working with more than 200 students every year in the production of our programmes."
Programmes begin at 5pm today, broadcasting from three TV studios at the Grimsby Institute.
