Topless darts is strictly off limits. But don't look forward to a feast of film favourites and soaps either, as Oxfordshire awaits its very own terrestrial channel.

The Oxford Channel will be beamed into our homes from June 6, as a local alternative to BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5.

There will be no need for dishes or set-top boxes. But having your own camcorder might be an advantage.

Because the channel's creator happens to believe that ordinary people should not only be the stars, but the programme makers as well for much of the time.

Few yet realise it, but the man behind Oxfordshire's new channel, reaching up to 330,000 people and 129,000 homes, is a genuine rebel with a cause. For Thomas Harding has spent much of his career tackling social justice issues and making politically committed films that the mainstream media wouldn't dare touch.

He is credited with shaping a generation of well equipped street-wise activists and eco-warriors, while his Video Activist Handbook inspired a small army of camcorder users, expert in filming demonstrations and clashes with police.

As for his own work, that has been described as "The Path News of the Nineties" and "a raw and impassioned call to arms".

Mr Harding, 29, and his American wife Debora Cackler are the joint managing directors of the Oxford Channel.

They ensured that Oxfordshire is in the first wave of UK regions to have a terrestrially delivered local station, when they were awarded a Restricted Service Licence by the In- dependent Television Commission.

It will be beamed from the Beckley transmitter just outside Oxford. So far they have raised £700,000, with Body Shop creators Anita and Gordon Roddick among those putting up money.

Mr Harding began as a television documentary maker with the BBC, but quit to set up his company, Small World, which operated from a terraced house in Florence Park, Oxford.

His quarterly video magazine, Undercurrents, was soon picking up national awards for its treatment of social injustice and media manipulation by police.

Mr Harding said: "Undercurrents made use of low cost hi-tech equipment like camcorders. It made use of equipment when it was new on the market and I want to take this on.

"The Oxford Channel will be value driven. Not social justice or environmental values, but community values. We will offer the opportunity for participation."

With no films and no sitcoms repeats, there nevertheless will be no shortage of re-runs on the Oxford Channel, which this week moved into new headquarters in Woodstock Road, Oxford.

Ms Cackler said "There will be a three-hour rolling schedule and we will transmit 18 hours a day with a four-minute local news programme on the top of the hour and two 20 minute features every hour."

These will include What's On programmes covering the local arts and music scene, talk shows and neighbourhood focuses.

But it's unlikely that the neighbours of either Walford or Weatherfield need fear that the soap bubble will be burst in this TV revolution.

Story date: Tuesday 02 March

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.