ITV wants to axe some regional news services

Although satellite has made it easier to open a TV channel it's not made it easier to do regional TV. Firstly you have no choice but to broadcast to the entire country and secondly there are hundreds of other channels vieing for your viewing time. DTT (and DAB) make things more difficult for regional/local broadcasting

Nice idea that the regional companies could have had their own channels but it probably wouldn't have happened, the cost would have been prohibitive for all but the biggest companies and they'd have been loss making.



It's nothing to do with Murdoch or Sky, the Sky Digital platform is open to anyone. Sky's attempt at a regionally based channel - Sky Scottish (co-owned by STV) failed as did it's news service for Ireland. STV and UTV tried regional versions of ITV2 and they didn't last long

You can hardly blame commercial companies for not doing something 'because it doesn't pay'. No business will do something they know doesn't pay

The Sky Digital platform may be open to anyone, but Sky are ultimately the gatekeepers and charge for the priviledged position of being on the EPG. Perhaps the EPG should be owned by a co-operative of leading broadcasters rather than just one to ensure a wider range of channels gets in, and favourable rates are offered for PSB services rather than just allow Sky Digital to fester under lots of Babecasts, Dial-a-Psychotic and other channels which offer the same service.

[quote="RR"]

The US set up is very diffrent, and the areas local news programmes cover are a lot bigger and also contain national news. The US TV system is made up of small TV stations which have always competed. I suppose one of the problems here is that the cosy old duopoly here never really created the local news culture that the US has. In the US the stations are local stations that show national programmes rather than a national service which shows local programmes

Not sure how many other countries have regional TV news, Germany, possibly France? Australia kinda does but AIUI these are national news programmes originating from around the country to cover the timezones



The ITC!? I doubt that Ofcom would do that, and if it was the case it would need to be part of the plans now.

As has been shown by the loss of so many RSL channels the business model of 'local TV' is difficult to make work, although the advantage of a DTT MUX is that it carries several services so a local channel could fill up the rest of the space with other more popular channels.




Regional services will always be determined by transmitters no matter what country you're in. The common sense is to have as few transmitters as possible.

It's more a matter of population and economy, some regional programmes here have trouble filling a half hour (Border for instance), even London struggles on some days.

National news programs during the day/late at night, which delayed into Central/Western Australia (the majority of people live on the east coast) wtih a local news bulletin at 6pm/5pm presented live in each of the five major cities (the 'metropolitan' markets). Most regional areas have at least one local news bulletin at 5.30pm or 6.00pm (with the news from the metro stations afterwards).

A lot of networks get by the local content quotas by just showing three-minute updates at various times of day rather than actual news services.

Take the recent example of the regional assembly vote in the north east - how did most people know about it? Through the coverage on BBC Look North and Tyne Tees.
The combined audience of both each night is roughly 400,000 viewers - way more than audiences for local radio and papers.

Similarly when people are asked to vote in local and general elections one of the few places that will air the issues locally is on regional tv news.

But local news is more than cats stuck up trees as some have suggested here. It's about reflecting where we live - be that of a serious nature or less so. In London maybe some aren't as bothered about regional news. But in Yorkshire and the north east we feel a long way from London and these are regions that get a lot less coverage on national news than the south east does.

And while we are on the subject of audience figures ITV's local news in Yorkshire and Tyne Tees is almost always the most watched show at 6 pm beating the BBC's 6 o'clock news, The Simpsons, Home and Away and a whole host of other stuff on cable and satellite.

It might be corny, old hat and past it for some but for many people I know it is important and they are always there at six to see Calendar.

[quote="Inspector Sands"]Not sure how many other countries have regional TV news, Germany, possibly France? Australia kinda does but AIUI these are national news programmes originating from around the country to cover the timezones

[quote]]

France has regional news on the licence fee funded France 3 which has in depth coverage although they are the only provider with nothing on commercial channels such as TF1.

Germany has an interesting system with regional channels for the various regions of the country such as NDR. As far as I know each of these have their own regional news show

Yes the regional stations that make up ARD such as NDR, MDR, BR, MDR make up Germany's '3rd channel' - with regional news and contribute to ARD1 (Das Erste or the '1st channel')

Did you just come on here and post this without reading the previous thread first?

6-8 million viewers is hardly "nobody", is it?

By that token "nobody" cares about Emmerdale either. Or The X Factor. Or just about anything else on ITV.

Presumably this will change when Freesat launch their more open EPG, though it will be interesting to see how this works, as presumably the FTA services on Sky and Freesat will want to have the same channel numbers on both. Wonder if Ofcom will be forced to regulate this a bit more pro-actively? (Ofcom already regulate the fees for access to the Sky EPG)

Yep - which will free up some space for ITV HD services due to launch in the Spring...

Be interesting to see if this is a new ITV HD service or an ITV1 HD service. The former would fragment audiences, but the latter would hit regional advertising issues, unless it were sold as a separate "region" (if that is allowed) which may target a nice demographic (techy early adopter types)

They are gatekeepers, but they can't refuse a customer who fullfills the criteria and pays the money.

There are several channels on the system that probably wouldn't be there if Rupert Murdoch had his way

Sweden and Norway have regional news operations AIUI. Sweden also produces networked shows from production bases other than those in Stockholm AIUI.

However Sweden, and to a lesser degree NRK, are heavily based on the BBC. Sweden even uses the same page numbers on teletext as CEEFAX for many topics...

I think you'll find most geographically large countries have a degree of regional broadcasting - though more compact countries - like Belgium, the Netherlands etc. may not.