Central South Closure: 10 Years on

So yesterday marked a milestone. It's been 10 years since I changed my signature last(!) and more importantly 10 years since the closure of Central South.

Really this was the first major ITV regional centre to close, with other major stations to follow three years later with the closure of Border and Westcountry.

In terms of Central South, although it was deemed to be an illogical region, I do believe the former region is served much worse then the Central South days. The majority of the patch is now with Meridian and get a more localised service from the BBC now. At least the Herefordshire viewers still get to see Wesley's face pop up from time to time when he's covering at Central.

I think ITV have began to settle to the fact that it provides Regional News rather than fight it out with Ofcom. But where do we feel the future of ITV Regional News will go in another 10 years time?

Ah how lovely for someone to mention the anniversary. The final main edition broadcasting live from Witney was a fantastic positive look after over 18 glorious years of Central South.

I still like to think Wesley will be a main anchor again. He jolly well deserves it. He did the main edition of Channel the other Friday and superb it was.

I unearthed some old publicity piccies the other week including one of Wesley and Anne.

It must've been jarring for Herefordshire viewers to have got all those references to " 18 years of Central News South" during the final week(s) of the Abingdon programme (which was accurate to within just a few weeks)...

...only for CN West to then spend it's "Herefordshire-welcoming" first week by claiming that it had only been " 17 years" since viewers in the county had last received the Brum-flavoured version of the programme. Rounding-down by eleven months (and also being so inconsistent/contradictory on-air) is ludicrous by anyone's standards.

I don't think Central West has actually covered anything in Herefordshire since that first week!

And even then it was generic feature items about the county and/or its main towns etc (e.g. City of Hereford on the Monday, Leominster on the Tuesday, Ross-on-Wye on the Wednesday... sort of thing). No actual "news" to speak of, IIRC.

Also, those packages were rather more "about" those places than "for" the viewers that already reside in the county.

Sadly they haven't had a dedicated reporter for 7 years (?) since the departure of Karen Griggs.

Ken Goodwin remains as the principle "Gloucestershire correspondent" to this day, but now of course contributing to the Brizzle-based ITV news programme.

Presumably at the time of CN South's closure, the only thing that would've really changed for the likes of Ken is the sign above the door on the Gloucester newsroom (which is/was presumably a small single office above a shop, or similar?) from "ITV Central" to "ITV West"?

The Gloucester office was indeed rebranded from Central to ITV West. They moved out of the office several years ago now and last I knew they had a small office not far away at the Gloucestershire College.

Is the former Central South studio building in Abingdon Business Park still occupied by ITV?

A google search of the address just returns a few results for ITV Thames Valley, and if you look on google street view, there doesn't appear to be any itv signage outside.

When Central South closed, they were keen to point out that the studio building would remain as the newsroom. Has it now been quietly closed down, or do they just occupy part of this building now, or have they downsized and moved to another building nearby, or has it just been closed down and not replaced?

Abingdon was still operational until 2013 albeit only a very small part of the building was in use. They moved to Didcot, again, on another business park.

The very final signage to grace their original Abingdon home was "ITV Meridian" (in the exact same 2006-2013 ITV corporate style that the short-lived "ITV Thames Valley" signage had been, of course).

At some point in the weeks/months leading up to ITV's 2013 new logo, the Abingdon building was vacated and they'd fully moved to Didcot. No ITV signage of any kind remained on the building, as far as I could see at that time.

Various road signs leading up to that Abingdon industrial estate still indicated directions for "Central TV", clearly having never been updated to reflect any changes such as the "Carlton", "Thames Valley" or "Meridian" eras.

Such road signs were still in place even after ITV had already vacated the site in 2013. Whether they've ever got around to removing/covering up/updating any remaining "Central TV" road signs by now, who knows.

There's still some road signs for "Central TV" on google street view (which was has been updated since ITV moved out, as the ITV signage is no longer outside the building), although how recent these images are and whether they're still there is another question.