​THE axe has fallen on Kent County Council’s controversial web TV station.

Kent TV, operated by Bob Geldof's Ten Alps Digital Media company, will no longer run after becoming victim to cost-cutting at the authority, it was announced today.

The station was launched in September 2007 on a two-year pilot and funded with approximately £1.6 million of taxpayers' money.

The pilot officially ended in August last year but the site was given a stay of execution by council chiefs. It has now been decided the £600,000-a-year web station is one expense too many as KCC looks to cut £200 million from its budget over the next three years.

KCC leader Paul Carter said: “Kent TV has proved itself to be a brave and bold innovation and we have learned a great deal from it. It has provided a source of practical, useful information for residents.

“And it has particularly appealed to younger residents with its Sound Clash song-writing competition; its Animate and Create animation competition and its groundbreaking soap opera Hollywould, which tackled young people's health issues.

“However, we are living in different and difficult economic times compared with when the pilot was launched in September 2007. In difficult times our spending has to be prioritised. We have therefore decided that Kent TV will not continue when the pilot period ends in March 2010.”

The station was meant to be self-funding through the use of advertising but insufficient revenue was raised and the station only pulled in an average of 2,500 unique visitors a day. It also came under attack from opposition members and taxpayers who branded the station a waste of public cash.

The Hollywould series, penned by EastEnders scriptwriter Julie Wassmer, was a last ditch attempt to win online ratings.

The £20,000 interactive, 10 episode, five-minute teenage soap opera allowed viewers to vote on how the next episode would turn out. The attempt was not enough  to save Kent TV. Just this month Cllr Carter told KRNMedia, publishers of the Express, that it had not been dynamic enough.

He said: “It’s not delivered on expectation and I would like it to be more dynamic. That’s not to say it’s been a failure because it hasn’t, but it hasn’t grown into the state I would like it to be right now. The question is if you continue with it, what can you turn it in to?

“The digital age and use of video-streaming and the concept of Kent TV is right and you ignore it at your peril. It’s a medium of the future. But if you’re going to fund it, what are you going to stop elsewhere? We already print and publish less and make savings for that and we have to do more of the same. There's already far too much bumph which no-one reads. And similarly on Kent TV we can’t produce a lot of stuff which people aren’t going to watch, it needs to be interesting and engaging.”

The decision to shut down the TV station follows an independent review.