Talking of South East news, moving back to television, it's fascinating to discover how muddled the situation was with regards to the region's early evening news in the late 60s and early 70s, unlike all other regions where it was all nice and simple and there was Midlands Today or Look North five days a week all the way through from the early 60s onwards.
Although Town and Around was the South East magazine from Monday to Friday for most of the 1960s, at the start of 1969 it got reduced to Wednesdays only, with a second regional programme starting on Fridays,
London This Week. Then on other weekdays they just gave up and put things like American sitcoms on.
When Nationwide started in September 1969, it was only on Tuesday-Thursday. Town and Around got the chop, London This Week moved from Friday to Monday, and on Fridays there were US sitcoms or cookery programmes or something called
Europe This Week for a while in 1970.
Although for most of the Nationwide era, the South East news was presented by the national team, for the first couple of years, it formed more of a stand-alone segment with its own presenter, set and theme tune. As Genome shows, the London edition of Radio Times listed the combined programme for the first year under the title '
London - Nationwide'.
On some occasions when Nationwide was off air, for example on
19th November 1969 to make way for moon walk coverage, the regional segment still aired, titled simply '
London'.
From January 1971 London This Week, which still seems to have been something entirely separate from Nationwide and unrelated to 'London', appeared on both Mondays and Fridays. At some point around 1971 the London/South East news became fully integrated into Nationwide, and then London This Week disappeared altogether in September 1972 when Nationwide was finally extended to five days a week, and it all becomes a bit simpler!