ITV criticized - Southern Scotland "unsatisfactory" news

My idea was for Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and County Durham to be in one news area, or one ITV region. The bit about opt outs was a 5 minute very localised bit during the main evening bulletin.

My idea would be;

Border Scotland incorporated into STV News, with a 5 min opt out within the main programme (in the same way as the Tayside opt works on STV News Grampian area). It could maybe be organised so that the Dumfries & Galloway area gets the Glasgow programme with the Border opt out and the Scottish Borders area gets the Edinburgh programme with the Border opt out. I don't know if this is possible. The opt out would therefore have to be recorded in advance.

ITV PLC would retain ownership of the whole Border region and all other scheduling/adverts etc would remain controlled by ITV not STV.

Border England would be fully incorporated into ITV Tyne Tees (matching the BBC) but with 3 opt outs for Border, Tyne Tees North & Tyne Tees South (better than the BBC). All would be recorded in advance from Gateshead and the Tyne Tees South opt would share content with ITV Calendar.

Of course this whole idea of one ITV company paying another ITV company to do its news is nothing new. LWT paid Thames £500'000 a year for the Thames weekend news. which contain:

* One, min highlights at 17.15
* One, 15 mins news programmes

This went on for 6 years straight. Useless fact for some of our younger members

But that was because LWT, until the late-80s, didn't really 'do' news - their idea of Friday evening current affairs was the mostly entertainment-led Six O'Clock Show, while the weekend news bulletins consisted of the duty announcer reading out agency copy. This was because of the change of handover time on Fridays from 7pm to 5.15pm from the start of the 1982 franchise period which meant that Thames 'lost' their Friday evening news programme, so the IBA ordered LWT to screen Thames Weeekend News as part of the Six O'Clock Show. During the summer, when the 6 O'Clock Show was off-air, Thames Weekend News was shown as a stand-alone programme. The IBA were still concerned, though, and from LWT beefed up their news output by contracting it out, while the Six O'Clock Show was axed to make way for Six O'Clock Live with more of an emphasis on news than on entertainment.

Dunno about The Six O'Clock stuff, not living in the area, but surely LWT more than made up for the Fridays with the Sunday lunchtime Weekend World?

IBA never order LWT to screen Thames news. But neither of the two London companies wanted to provide a 7 day joint service. In fact IBA had to backdown over this disagreement. LWT hated Thames sport programme at 18.30, which was blamed for the lack of viewers at 19.00. Six o'clock show, ended up being a big hit with the viewers, and this was by 1982. The show was kept until June 1988, 6 months after LWT started its own news service, contracted out to Screen News, once it was axed it was replaced with LWT news and Friday now. but that was axed in summer of 1989, then Six O' clock live was used.

LWT's approach towards local news was criticised by the IBA because of the Weekend opt, worse thing was LWT had over 90 journalists on the payroll...


Thats current affairs not news, LWT was well know for its current affairs.

Tyne Tees still have two studios don't they? So surely they could manage a bit better than currently by using both to produce the three shows.

The minute you start doing that though you increase overheads as you need more presenters and more crew to man two galleries. Recording a 5 min news round up at 5:30pm isn't that much of a problem to me.

That's where you're wrong, I'm afraid. Thames had up until the end of 1981 broadcast Thames News at 6pm on Mondays to Fridays, with Thames Sport airing on a Friday at 6.30pm. With the earlier handover time, the Friday 6pm slot was lost to Thames, and LWT were reluctant to start their own news service despite pressure from the IBA. A joint news service managed by both companies had been proposed, but never got beyond this stage. This was why Thames Weekend News was aired during The Six O'Clock Show.

The IBA's concerns were finally addressed in 1988 when the Six O'Clock Show was axed and Friday Live (later Six O'Clock Live) introduced in its place, with LWT also beefing up its weekend news output at the same time.

your just repeated everything that has been said.


unless people are confused about this part, Maybe I could have worded it better, but 1982 its first year resulted in big ratings.

To be fair Six O'clock show had ran out of steam, beefed up LWT news had been running for 6 months. When Friday now was created 3 months later it was magazine show. Six o'Clock live still had one Danny baker

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Note whos reading the ITN Morning News on that image!
LOL

Weekend World wasn't a regional news programme.... hence the name