Changes coming to ITV Regional News

Announced this morning:

The ITV News Group today announced a set of major enhancements to regional news programmes to improve the service to viewers across the country.

Key changes include:

the overall number of 6pm flagship regional news programmes is being increased from 16 to 17
a new service aimed at the Thames Valley will be introduced
separate editions of Calendar will be set up for the east and west of the ITV Yorkshire region
the trial of running two editions of Tyne Tees’ North East Tonight, one for the north of the region and one for the south, will become permanent
ITV West’s broadcasting footprint is being expanded to include the area around Gloucester and Cheltenham
The changes are the result of a widespread review of ITV’s regional news services in England and Wales. The review’s objective was to prioritise the regional flagship programmes and to ensure ITV broadcasts to identifiable regions.

Since the creation of a single ITV, the ITV News Group has modernised the editorial approach of regional news programmes and invested significantly in digital newsrooms to create one of the most modern networks of digital news centres in Europe.

The existing regional map has remained unchanged since the early 1990s when ITV was locked into traditional franchise areas with only limited co-operation across regional boundaries.

All the changes have been agreed by Ofcom and will be introduced in a phased manner between now and the end of 2006.

Clive Jones, Chief Executive of ITV News and Regions said:

“ITV has an unrivalled record in delivering excellent local TV news with some of the best journalists in the country reporting on the stories local people want to see and hear.

“We have already modernised our local news studios, investing to develop state of the art digital studios. Today’s changes will help improve the service further, with an expansion in the number of flagship programmes and a commitment to make local news more relevant than ever before to our viewers.”

Region-by-region changes

Thames Valley

The new Thames Valley region brings together Meridian West and much of Central South. They are currently amongst the smallest news regions in terms of population and audience and their news centres are only 21 miles apart.

The new service will serve a vibrant part of the south of England and will broadcast to a coherent region. Viewers will benefit from the change with a full service of programmes covering their region. However, combining two existing news regions will lead to up to 40 job losses in editorial and production areas. ITV will be working closely with the unions and staff, consulting on how the changes will be introduced.

ITV West

The area around Gloucester will in future receive its news from ITV West. The Gloucester bureau will transfer from ITV Central to ITV West and will continue to provide excellent coverage for local viewers.

ITV Yorkshire

In ITV Yorkshire there will be two separate editions of Calendar. One programme will serve the cities and communities in the North and West of the region, which get their signal from the Emley transmitter (Leeds, Bradford, York etc.). The other will serve Sheffield and South Yorkshire and the area covered by the Belmont transmitter. (Hull, Grimsby, Lincoln etc.). Stories from Sheffield will also be reflected in the North and West programme, for viewers in the South of the region who get their signal via the Emley transmitter. The two programmes will be backed by a significant investment in a new studio, gallery and news gathering technology.

ITV Tyne Tees

Following successful trials, Tyne Tees will have two separate flagship programmes for the north and south of the region. Each programme will have dedicated presenters, its own studio, satellite truck and newsgathering team.

Other changes

ITV is concentrating resources and investment on the half hour flagship programmes. Elsewhere in the schedule, shorter bulletins will in some instances be pan-regional. Tyne Tees and Yorkshire will each have pan regional bulletins throughout the week. Anglia, Meridian and Central will have pan regional bulletins at weekends. Thames Valley will have dedicated bulletins right across the schedule.

No change

All regions were included in the review of our flagships and bulletins, however no changes to the structure of the news schedule or regional boundaries are planned for Border, Granada, ITV Wales, ITV London or Westcountry.

That's the thin end of the wedge, really.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, really - but it really is the start of the wholesale dismantling of the regional news network.

Most of the change in recent years has been structural - behind the scenes. Now it will really affect the on-air product.

Pan-regional bulletins for Meridian and Central are also a step back from parity with the BBC provision.

PS - some of this is already being discussed in this thread:
www.tvforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20986

It looks to me to just be an awful lot of puff and spin about two transmitter reallocations and an awful lot more job cuts.

Would a reasonable precis simply be that Central South is being got rid of, the Ridge Hill transmitter moving to West and the Oxford transmitter moving to Meridian?

All the other bits are just silly little tweaks and a lot of service reductions.

So looking at the Calendar changes, it looks like while there will be a split bulletin at 6pm, the seperate sub-regional bulletins at 10.55am and at Lunchtime will be dropped. It also seems to mean the end of Calendar South as we know it. Although they do tend to read the same stories in a different order half the time

Also I worry about what studio facilities they will use for Calendar East at 6pm, the Leeds studio is one of the biggest on the network at the moment and will therefore look cramped if they split it down the middle

Funny then how Berwick-on-Tweed is being considered for a move from the Border region into the Tyne Tees region - which it was in originally - as a result of the switchover to digital TV in the Border region in 2008. Also remember a number of the South Lakes relays carried Granada at one time and were switched to Border in 1982. If anything, I can see Border's territory being split between Granada and STV before long.

Pretty much.

Didn't ITV West do a Cheltenham Festival special earlier this year? They obviously thought Ridge Hill was already theirs.

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I suppose the full east/west split of the Calendar area also warrants being regarded as fairly significant. Let's hope the "east" show is better than The Peter Levy Show.

I assume that the "south" sub-opt of Calendar will be scrapped, in favour a single "west" edition?

Is the existing Calendar "Leeds" sub-region (i.e. not East or South) officially known as "north" or "west"?

It's always seemed a little odd that the other two sub-regions' bulletins have compass directions in the title, but "north" sub-regional bulletins have the exact same title as pan-regional bulletins (i.e. Calendar News). I assume this is because "north" is also the default if East and/or South fail to opt out?

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I'm surprised that ITVplc aren't trying to scrap the microscopic Westcountry sub-regions. I bet they will one day.

Yes.

I speculated at the time that the sat truck driver got lost, thinking he'd been sent to Wincanton races.

My humorous side likes the bit, buried in the depths of the press release, saying that the old (Central) Gloucester bureau is being kept on, but re-allocated to West. I take it they HAD to do that because there's nobody in Bristol who knows the way to Gloucester if they needed to cover a story up there.

I've seen it known as North, West, Central, Emley etc, but as you say neither are used on screen

Yes and the fact that as it covers North and West Yorkshire, whatever compass point you used wouldn't be accurate

Let's hope the new 6pm Calendar East manages to find more than 5 minutes worth of news and doesn't have to rely on interviewing Z list celebrities that once visited Hull 3 years ago

Is it the case that the Lincs/E Yorks/N-NW Norfolk area is "a bit of a backwater" and therefore not very "news-rich"???? If so, then it's hardly surprising that it's a struggle to fill a 30-minute programme with any real news.

I get the impression that something similar is true of the existing ITV West area (isn't it a one-transmitter region?), so expansion into the Ridge Hill area might help them find something worthwhile to report.

Then again, I also get the impression from past talk here that ITV West news is journalistically sub-standard? If so, then simply increasing the patch won't necessarily mean they find anything better to fill the programme with. In fact, if this...



...is anything to go by, then increasing ITV West's patch may actually make things worse (i.e. the programme will be very biased towards only really bothering with news stories from their existing patch, thus alienating Ridge Hill viewers).

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Do ITV still have an obligation to provide regional news, when all the regions eventually become fully-digital? Last I heard, the obligation to provide regional news currently applies to analogue licences?! It might have changed since I last looked though (2004).

"...ITV West and will continue to provide excellent coverage for local viewers. "

haha ha ha haaa haa ha ha haha.

Oh thanks, I needed a good laugh

It is quite possible to have a news rich region on one transmitter. The North West/Granadaland is all broadcast from Winter Hill (and it's relays).

Unless you know the transmitter logistics you would think having separate Merseyside/Lancashire/Gtr Manchester roundups would be beneficial but logistically not very easy!