ITV Wales to outsource local news

ITV Wales has today told staff that it does not intend to produce local news programming from February 2013.

It will offer the slot out to tender and expected bidders include Welsh outfit Tinopolis and ITN.

I don't have anything else on this at the moment, but it has come from within ITV Wales, and the union has been informed, along with staff. The reason given is that there are not enough funds to employ staff to produce it in house, and it would be far cheaper to outsource it.

The HTV Culverhouse Cross complex is pretty extensive, isnt it? Is it used by a lot of independent production companies also ? Or will this deem the end of this site?

HTV rented it for a few years but ITV bought it back about 3 or 4 years ago to turn it into a media centre. I'm sure they make Doctor Who and Merlin there.

Oh Thank you.

Doctor Who may have been made there in the past, but I believe it is now made in a BBC-operated complex that was built as a centre for Cardiff drama (Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood are made there as well ISTR)

Don't know about Merlin - the location stuff is in France.

AH but this can only go out to Tender if process gets the go ahead. ( and there still a tone of questions about this)

Unlike ITV, STV are bidding for the Scottish contract, for the slot but it all depends about funding etc and the tender process which will have very high standards

Although it referrers to Scotland it would also be clamped to wales and other test area: Cornwall area
UK Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw: http://news.stv.tv/blogs//news-the-real-mackay-091105/

ITV could also bid for wales

This is quite an old story in fact it was discussed here: http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/topic30019 and has been reported by Media Guardian throughout: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/16/itv-regional-news-pilots
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/jun/18/itv-local-news-consortia-digital-britain etc

The idea is that the regional news on ITV1 will be contracted out to independent production companies, and that a trial scheme of a couple of regions will be launched first. As to what happens to those currently working on ITV's regional news and their premises/facilities I haven't seen... but I would have thought that those working would be transferred under TUPE

The bigger issue is that the License fee would be top-sliced to fund these new programmes, although this is very unpopular and probably won't happen: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/17/bbc-fears-licence-fee-itv

Last I heard ITV were planning on selling off the whole site with their operations relocating to a small part of it.

Although there's no reason why a new news supplier wouldn't want to take over existing facilities if it's cheaper than building their own ones

Although it may make good financial sense to rent the current ITV facilitites, I think there are sound reasons for preventing this unless they are provided at minimal cost.

Not only is ITV abandoning one of the core requirements of its licences, and expecting someone else to pay for providing the service, I think it would be fundamentally wrong for them to be able to turn a profit on the whole process by hiring out their facilities at market rates.

I don't see why it would be an issue, whether ITV makes money out of it is neither here nor there. The indies get proper new facilities and the changeover would be relatively easy, quick and smooth. The new producers will be stuffed without an archive too, they will have to do a deal with ITV for use of it's footage in each area

The other thing is that this is a pilot scheme - Scotland, Wales and 1 English region at first and then rolling out if it works ok. I doubt anyone wants ITV (or STV) to ditch it's facilities and close it's offices if it's decided a year down the line that the scheme doesn't work out.

Nothing to stop ITV Wales putting the service out-to-tender themselves in the absence of the Government deciding to compel them to. Of course, in such situation, they would have to pay for the service themselves rather than the supplier getting Exchequer funding to do so. There is nothing in the Channel 3 licence to say that an ITV company must *produce* the regional news themselves, only that regional news must be broadcast. Indeed Carlton and LWT contracted out the production of their local news to London News Network until fairly recently when ITN took over the service.

I'm still not certain this should go ahead. It seems like a solution tailor-made for ITV plc is possibly being imposed on STV and UTV and it would be a shame if the highly successful UTV Live service (the only ITV region which beats its BBC competitor) was forced to close, against UTV's wishes, in order to fit a problem of ITV plc's.

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STV news does beat BBC news ever so often,. At the point of writing stv are favorites to do the polite in scotland