Lokal TV (Local TV Portal)

The Local TV Portal was launched for the first time in 2012 as a multi-level interactive HbbTV application and furthermore as central brand and content aggregator with the aim to improve the findability and permanent availability of local television stations in Germany. It was developed by Bayerische Medien Technik GmbH (bmt) on behalf of Bavarian Regulatory Authority for Commercial Broadcasting (BLM). In spring 2022 the 4th version was relaunched and meanwhile, more than 70 local TV stations in Germany are bundled in one HbbTV application.

Description

The big challenge in the daily competition for smaller local and regional TV broadcasters is an easy findability and a permanent availability of their content even without high distribution costs. Therefore, the Local TV Portal was launched in 2012 as a multi-level interactive HbbTV application and furthermore as central brand and content aggregator. It was developed by Bayerische Medien Technik GmbH (bmt) on behalf of Bavarian Regulatory Authority for Commercial Broadcasting (BLM). Meanwhile, more than 70 local TV stations are bundled in one application. The Local TV Portal is transmitted as a still image channel via satellite with a HbbTV application. In addition, the portal is linked as Internet Link Service in many DVB-T2 broadcast areas in Germany. This year, a complete refresh of the application was launched. For the users the navigation is intuitive via logos of the federal states and the programmes. Channel information describes the selected TV stations and broadcast areas. After the selection of a TV programme the application detects automatically if a live signal via satellite, a MPEG transport stream, DASH stream or a catch-up TV application is available and always restarts with the last selected channel. The local TV portal is a good example how even regional or local broadcasters can benefit from HbbTV to realise a cross-regional visibility of their topics and contents.

www.lokal-tv-portal.de (only in German)

Impact

Local TV is successful. It is close to the daily issues of the people in the region and journalistically at the highest level. While the majority of local TV viewers still watch it in the traditional way on their TV sets, Connected TV becomes more and more important. In view of the increasing digital competition, the findability and permanent availability of local content is a major challenge today. Reach for local TV means being present on all relevant platforms and making local content available to audiences over longer periods of time. Satellite distribution is uneconomical for many small providers. With the local TV portal based on HbbTV, it has been possible to bundle over 70 local TV stations from Germany into one platform and make them accessible via satellite and DVB-T2 (Internet Link Service). The local and regional offers range from linear TV programmes to on-demand offers with a total of over 1 million views per year on the HbbTV app.