Media & Technology in London

London is a major international communications centre with a virtually unrivaled number of media outlets. Much of the British media is concentrated in London and is sometimes accused of having a “London bias". All the major television networks are headquartered in London including the BBC, which remains one of the world’s most influential media organisations. Partly to counter complaints about London bias, the BBC announced in June 2004 that some departments are to be relocated to Manchester. Other networks headquarted in London include ITV, Channel 4, Five and BSkyB. Like the BBC, these produce some programmes elsewhere in the UK, but London is their main production centre. Local programming including news is provided by all main networks via city-based local stations (eg: BBC London or ITV London).

There is a huge choice of radio stations available in London. Local city-wide stations include music-based stations such as Capital FM, Heart 106.2, Kiss 100 and Xfm. Popular news/talk stations include BBC London, LBC 97.3 and LBC News 1152.

The London newspaper market is dominated by London editions of the national newspapers, all of which are edited in London. Until the 1970s, most of the national newspapers were concentrated in Fleet Street, but in the 1980s they relocated to new premises with automated printing works. Most of these are in East London, most famously the News International plant at Wapping. The move was resisted strongly by the printing trade union SOGAT 82, and strike action at Wapping in 1986 led to violent skirmishes. The last major news agency in Fleet Street, Reuters, moved to Canary Wharf in 2005, but Fleet Street is still commonly used as a collective term for the national press.

London has three daily newspaper titles - the popular Evening Standard, plus two free titles, Metro and Standard Lite (published by the Evening Standard) which are distributed every day at London tube and railway stations. The independent weekly listings guide Time Out Magazine has been providing concert, film, theatre and arts information since 1968.

London is at the centre of British film and television production industries, with major studio facilities on the western fringes of the conurbation and a large post-production industry centred in Soho. London is one of the two leading centres of English-language publishing alongside New York. Globally important media companies based in London range from publishing group Pearson, to the information agency Reuters, to the world’s number two advertising business WPP Group.

There are a vast number of local newspapers in the London area, often covering a small section of the city.

Technology

With computers and technology playing a key part in the economy, companies have created a large number of datacentres within Greater London, many of which are in the Docklands area. As a result, London now hosts key parts of the Internet, including LINX (London INternet eXchange), the largest Internet Exchange Point in the world carrying over 82Gb/sec (12/2005) of internet traffic - an estimated 96% of UK internet traffic.