Evgeny Lebedev’s local TV station London Live is to stop commissioning entertainment shows, instead opting to boost the amount of news and current affairs on the channel.

On Monday, London Live said the programming shift is designed to align the TV station’s content more closely with the London Evening Standard’s 15-44 audience.

The station’s Ofcom licence requires eight hours of fresh content a day, currently this has been comprised of 5.5 hours of news and current affairs and 2.5 hours of originally commissioned and acquired entertainment programming.

Under the new strategy, all eight hours of fresh London content a day will be news and current affairs, a move the company says will continue to “honour its Ofcom licence commitments”.

To date, London Live has commissioned about 25 original series, including Food Junkies from Jamie Oliver’s Fresh One productions and Drag Queens of London, at an estimated cost of up to £20,000 per hour.

“London Live has delivered on its remit to deliver talked-about, noisy London content that punches above its weight, outshining traditional broadcasters with its fresh tone of voice and approach,” said Tim Kirkman, chief operating officer at London Live. “I am extraordinarily proud of what Jonathan Boseley, head of programming and commissioning, and his team have achieved, in record time, and delivered on previously unheard-of tariffs.

“I am also excited to take the station in a new editorial direction this autumn that will capitalise on [London Live and Evening Standard parent company] ESI Media’s unique attributes to take the channel from strength to strength into its next season and beyond,” he said.

As a result of the strategic shift, London Live’s commissioning and programming team, headed by Boseley, have entered a consultation period regarding their roles.

London Live said that the “resource will be reapportioned” into a range of new positions in the news and current affairs team.

Last month, London Live applied to Ofcom to drop its commitment to broadcast 10 hours of repeats of local content a day, including 1.5 hours of repeats in peak time.

It is also aiming to cut peaktime local content to just one hour a day, from its current commitment of three hours a day.

Ofcom’s public consultation on the changes closes on 26 August.

London Live has not said what content it might use to fill its schedule, but it does have a number of deals for hundreds of hours of London-themed archive programming.

A deal with Channel 4 for 150 hours of archive programming includes comedies Peep Show, Spaced, Smack the Pony and dramas such as White Teeth and Misfits.

A deal with BBC Worldwide includes 50 hours of content such as Twenty Twelve and The Shadow Line.

ESTV, the company behind London Live, ran up a loss of £1.25m in its first 13 months as it went through the bidding process to win the Ofcom TV licence.

Losses will have widened significantly since then as the business rapidly increased staff numbers up to, and beyond, launch on 31 March.

The channel has got off to a difficult start since launch, attracting small audiences – its breakfast show, Wake Up London, averaged 2,400 viewers in its first three weeks and registered a Barb score of zero viewers on eight occasions. It also lost editorial director Stefano Hatfield within weeks of its first broadcast.

Earlier this month, Birmingham’s City TV, the second largest local TV area, called in the administrators before it had even got on air. It was due to launch on 6 November.

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