What does ITV Regional news lack?

Just wanted to start a thread to ask opinions on what you think ITV Regional news lacks? In my humble opinion, its personality. Tuning around and watching the regions, the one thing that strikes home so quickly is the inability to repond to an item as an 'ad-lib'
This comes back to the age old argument that a good reporter doesn't always make a good presenter. The two skills are very different. Just because you're a good reporter and can 'ask the questions' it doesn't always mean that you can hold it together when it goes 'belly-up' in the studio. Switch off the autocue and many presenters would not cope. News presentation in this country continues to be very stuffy and 'stiff upper lip'
Yes, be serious where the story warrants it, but relax and smile a little
and please appear to be human, rather than just a robot reading the words.
Thoughts please.

REGIONALITY

DECENT NEWS AGENDA

REALLY BIG WRITING

SORRY, WRONG THREAD

Sorry.

I think it struggles because the ITV Evening News is a load of pap and is on later than the national news. People care more about national events than regional ones, so the natural choice is BBC One, where national news comes first.

Border lack A Sat truck, and therefore we are lucky to get one LIVE per month on Lookaround, where they have to borrow a truck from either Granada or Tynetees ? They also lack continuity on the presenters rota, there are about 8 different Lookaround presenters who are paired together and all appear fairly regularly. But, at least the programme covers real news, and it is not filled with tabloid stories like other ITV regions, although the filler stories are pretty rubbish.

although in the past some stations beat their bbc counterparts hands down, and iirc tyne tees still do?

perhaps its the one-size fits all approach adopted then dropped by the bbc, and seemingly adopted by the new suits in london. integrating all the itv regions into the "itv news" group probably makes fantastic sense financially, but seems to have taken a lot of decision making down to london. central news west is churning out more and more pap, and i guess we can look forward to more london tonight type features as the months go on.

i'm not one to moan about dumbing regional news down, because regional news has always had a light-hearted slant to it. but the shift in the news agenda at central has been rapid, meanwhile they are not making any headway in the ratings.

... a cynic would say they are now applying the "make it crap, so that no-one watches, then we can justify scrapping it" approach to regional news, as they applied so successfully to regional programmes.

My region (Calendar) lacks comprehensive news - about 2 big items then all it has on is interviews with the Emmerdale cast, which is just utter tripe when I want to know what's happening in this desolate region

I can only speak for my own region, ITV Wales, but I think its definately not as good as it was when it was HTV News. Although the new titles are better the programme itself isnt as good. Im sick of all these competitions, and asking people to e-mail and text in with comments, that was never what region news was about. And now they are filling the programme with more and more lighter storys and pictures the camera men have taken from around the region. Once or twice a year having competitions and stuff is OK but not nearly every week.

As for the presenters we have a really strong line up of presenters for the main programme in Lucy and Jonathan. Andrew Jones who does morning bulletins has improved a bit. Some of the other presenters are quite poor though, in particular the weekend ones, I agree with the comment about some of them being better at reporting than reading the news in the studio.

However I hope things will improve when the news relaunches in Wales this year? (it was said in the programme statement it would anyway)

Also ITV West news is worst than ITV Wales news by miles, although I dont watch ITV West much.

Meridian Tonight (South) can be quite good at times and we have some good presenters (Fred Dinenage, Debbie Thrower & Sue Greenfield) but a lot of the non Tonight presenters can be bad. Gareth Evans always takes a big sigh before starting and Kerry Swain usually takes three seconds to get going...

News content can vary, but I like how they put the most light hearted of stories at the end, after the serious content. As for the Weather, Martyn Davies is quite good, as is Carl Tyler (although he only comes on once in a while) but Gemma Humphries is simply awful and buys awful too tight shirts...

The new studio's large plasma does nothing and just displays a static image and the other two are usually used for a squares animation or live reports.

Somebody at Meridian has mucked up the titles, because they now seem to have a black background with really light other parts... snaps below.

John

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridiannews1.jpg
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridiannews2.jpg
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridiantonight1.jpg
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridiantonight2.jpg
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridiantonight3.jpg

P.S. Having watched the East edition, they don't seem to have the black colouring.

''What does ITV Regional news lack?''

Moira Stuart, Fiona Bruce and Natasha Kaplinsky.

I think the most obvious thing that is lacking in some cases is... news.