The Regional Companies and their Capabilities

Technically, the ability for all stations to do entirely their own thing in terms of presentation and programming still exists, even with transmission being rationalised. Westcountry is a key example of this - they have NEVER had their own transmission, it was handled by HTV Wales from day 1 until 2003 and since then has been done by LNN. Yet for a long time HTV Wales and Westcountry were totally separate channels with no discernable link (beyond being ITV network stations) between the two. That they were both transmitted from the same site is irrelevant.

As Jason said however, politically it will never happen.

When did they loose their ability to do this? The writing was on the wall for it when stations stopped being independent and started being part of a conglomerate, but cemented in 1998 when all Carlton/GMG/UNM stations one way or another went corporate (except for the idents, which followed in 1999) with no individual station in the control of one of those 3 parties being allowed to decide for themselves their overall branding scheme any more (although YTV and TTTV continued to have their own non-network brand until 2002).

This was then cemented in 2002 when the then Carlton and Granada ITV stations started being passed off as though they were a single channel called ITV1.

Oh it happended did it?

It's possible to broadcast anything at any time.

If someone wanted to do it they'd have to go to the transmission centre (London, Leeds or Cardiff) put the replacement item into their playout system, edit the schedule on the computer...... and then hope that no-one notices.

Here we go again.... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

That's a little rude. He's talking sense, whether it bores you or not!

Anyway, thanks to those who answered my question, I think I understand the situation now.

Oh come on. I find his explaination of how the network works really interesting, it was very rude for you to say that!

Yes that's true, I was merely pointing out that TTTV Newcastle has one single feed to Leeds, and this has a front-end which has been used in the past to provide partial continuity switching, and can still be used for such a purpose -- for example if TTTV were linking into a programme from studio 1 from news, it is perfectly possible for them to link one to t'other without any input from Leeds. The basic infrastructure is essentially unchanged from when the continuity announcer could link from IVC to the news programme without Leeds providing switching, although this has not been used for this purpose for some years.

The Teesside feed has been independent of Newcastle since early 1993, before transmission was passed to Leeds in fact (prior to Belasis opening the Newcastle tx centre actually had no way of transmitting output from the Middlesbrough studio live; it was passed through the news gallery and provided to pres on tape, who could then opt the Bilsdale transmitter out from Newcastle).



It's my understanding that Manchester cannot not provide this service either. It has to be said though that *any* gallery (eg news) could be used for continuity at a stretch -- TTTV's news did actually provide a small amount of switching/continuity even when Newcastle was independent, for convenience.

You might find it boring but other people dont, I always find cwathen's posts interesting and informative.