The latest changes to cross-media ownership rules mean that local newspaper and radio franchise owners can now develop local and city TV stations.

And in a multi-platform world, that need not and should not mean building a giant broadcasting hub with all of the equipment and personnel costs that implies.

Instead, using digital content production and user generated content, local and city TV services can get much closer to their audience at a fraction of the cost of any previous generation of broadcasting startups.

News Network International has been involved in such pioneering in the past. In the 1980s, we established a London newsroom for the Scandinavian satellite channel TV3 to help deal with the bizarre situation in which the channel could transmit legally over cable services across Sweden, Norway and Denmark but could not legally operated a newsroom within those territories.

We built a newsroom from scratch and recruited Scandinavian staff.

Then, in the 1990s, we worked with the Associated Media City TV service Channel One. We were not responsible for the model, which was flawed and failed, but we did provide editorial services and helped innovate news gathering methods.

Today, as new models and new opportunities arise, we will help local TV entrepreneurs design news gathering strategies based on social networking which will feed into digital production techniques. We can help clients create a sustainable 24-hour news service at extremely low cost.

Prime viewing periods will offer live, professionally produced news programming. Off peak hours will be more reliant on mediated UGC plus automated systems.

There has never been a more exciting, more challenging time for local broadcasting. Ask NNI to design, implement and train for your Local TV and City TV investment.