Local Media Network

The Local Media Network (LMN) is a grouping of 42 local television stations in Lenapore. All members are independent television broadcasters from the states and the commercial channels from Handak.

LMN was founded in 2012 in order to foster relationships between the growing local television industry.

History

Predecessors

Local television is actually older than the idea of the LMN. On February 19th, 1961, while waiting for TVL's microwave network to cover Hamanashi, the Hamanashi Television Station was set up, mainly broadcasting in Japanese. Within a few weeks the service was terminated due to the arrival of the link, and at the time, the single channel mainly broadcast in English.

In contrast with the television stations that opened in Bonoro (HBC, 1968) and Rangeedu (XBC, 1978), these were at the mercy of the LBC and the autonomous government.

New experiments started in the 1980s. They were all illegal and relied on rudimentary equipment, and broadcasting on UHF. These experiments started as far back as November 1983, with a television station known as TVB (after the Hang Pengese channel of the same name) and broadcast recordings of TVB's drama series in their native Cantonese - at the time, dialect programming was forbidden and LBC channels had to air them in Mandarin dubs instead. The situation was reverted a few months later after the coup. Most of these stations shut down for numerous reasons, including programming in "banned dialects" and conspiracies against the government, before and after the coup. In the coming years new television stations emerged from the vastly unused UHF band, mostly broadcasting new films, music videos and sporting events that LBC didn't cover. In subsequent years these stations were all shut down and the Lenaporean government started a plan to introduce UHF broadcasting at a national scale. In Lenapore City, City TV (unrelated with Mediacorp's later network of local channels of the same name) started operating in 1985 but ended operations in December 1986 due to financial troubles, despite their insistence in making the service legal. The telecommunications providers saw these stations as an easy target for termination, knowing that they would do the inevitable and close all these services.

The start of legalized local TV

In 1991, a new experiment was set up in Cantonments, Cantovision, broadcasting in English for two hours a day. The channel was the first to legally break a monopoly that was covered by the Lenapore Broadcasting Corporation. This tested the limits of the LBC and other cities protested to follow the example of Cantonments. In Lenapore City, Higashioku and Arau, stations were set up between 1992 and 1993 featuring the same characteristics as Cantovision: two hours a day, programming reduced to local content made at the station and cheap to run on the UHF band.

Creation of the LMN

In May 2011 the LMN's laying grounds were established, receiving invitations to 14 individual local television stations. The goal was to create the LMN within twelve months. Over time the number of invitations grew.

On January 24, 2012, the LMN started operations. It started with 35 members.

Members

Current members

Channel	Language	Year of ounding	Location	Coverage
Capital Television	English	2000	Lenapore City	Lenapore City
Tsurui Television	Japanese	1993	Lenapore City	Lenapore City
NTV Bangla Lenapore	Bengali	2005	Lenapore City	Lenapore City+
Cantovision	English	1991	Cantonments	Cantonments
Televisyen Arau	Malay, Malayanese	20??	Arau	Arau

Stations with a plus sign imply that its coverage area is national on other providers.

Former members

• Bulan (shut down)

Never approved

• XBC Television: since the Xalxas Autonomy doesn't have infrastructure for a second television channel, under private ownership, XBC tried to join the grouping in 2004, but failed since the local government owned the channel. Some of the programs part of LMN's catalog are seen on XBC.