ITV wants to axe some regional news services

I really hope something like the above happens, as an "ITV North East & Cumbria... & South Scotland " (!) region seems ridiculous.

Regardless of whether Border Scotland gets any special provision as above, I think that the Isle of Man's official editorial region should become Granada. Seeing as the "NE & Cumbria" part of the patch is already so wide - stretching right from east coast to west coast - it'd be even dafter to have something as far west as Manx in the same region as Tyne Tees land.

You can't switch Gloucestershire back to central as the southern half of the county is served by Mendip. If you took away the Ridge Hill West relay, you'd be taking away what the people of north Gloucestershire campaigned for over many years. (Remenber that Gloucester is geographically closer to Bristol than Taunton and Swindon.)

You seem to have produced a pretty confusing post, there, all round.

Technically, you can't split the ITV West region into the three portions you suggest, due to the coverage of the current, high-power transmitter at Mendip.

You could carve off the Ridge Hill chunk again and give it back to Central, or whoever, but that's the extent of the spltting you could do.

As for you saying that you get Bristol focused news from Southampton, I confess to being at a total loss.

I assume you mean Whitely and not Southampton. Northam in Southampton closed down ages ago and is now practically derelict.

The only thing at Whitely which could possibly be described as Bristol focused is Mr Malone, the brother of the ITV West presenter of the same name.

Apologies if my post came across as confusing. I realise I should have been clearer in my explanations.

Personally I don't agree with splitting HTV into pieces which I have said in my post above was only a suggestion and a possible solution however some members already have pointed out the flaws of getting rid of HTV.

I meant to say I don't really mind watching news & programmes centred around the West of England (that I said the name Bristol as this where HTV and BBC West are based) and yes, I apologise again I also meant to say Whiteley instead of Southampton - again force of habit!

BBC studio centres in the UK are not connected via satellite, but combined video and audio circuits supplied by a number of telecom companies, usually on fibre optic. However its likely that to avoid a running order clash, one programme's weather would be on tape. Before the Hull studio was transmitting its own programme, there was a temporary gallery in (the old BBC) Leeds that transmitted the Yorks and Lincs opt to the Belmont transmitter and relays, so its possible that historically that's where the weather presenter sharing came from, though of course it would save on costs overall to have just one weather presenter etc for both.

The current links between main BBC regional studio centres are provided by Energis fibre connections, which are also used for distributing network feeds to the regional centres. There are other connections between sub-regional centres and local radio inject points etc. which can use microwave or fibre circuits provided by other providers, like BT.

The BBC is in the process of shifting to a new system for linking their main centres - but it isn't up and running yet.

I think you're right about Hull and Leeds sharing a weather presenter - partially because Paul Hudson was a popular figure in both parts of the original region, and because the original Hull opt didn't have facilities for its own live weather, so the whole junction (including studio banter between Paul and Peter) was pre-recorded. I guess even though Hull may now have the facilities - they still share Paul! (Must save a bit of money as well... One fewer salary to pay etc.)

I didn't know the link between leeds and hull was prerecorded. Just shows you how good editing is.

In fact, daily and weekly newspapers' combined readerships is far more than regional television viewership. Add radio to that and they dwarf the regional tv news figures.

These are the audited circulation figures for the big North East dailies.

Northern Echo circulation 51,639
Newcastle Evening Chronicle 80,669
The Journal, Newcastle 33,614
Evening Gazette, Teesside 52,491
Sunderland Echo 43,532

Of course, these are circulations. Multiply by more than 2 for readerships.

Add weeklies, including free weeklies (which are really the newspaper equivalent of ITV, free at the point of use, news paid for by advertisements) and you'll have a much bigger total. OK, a lot of local weekly papers' quality varies. But they're still a very potent force.

For example, East Cleveland Herald and Post alone has a circulation of 49,341. Add all the weekly papers of Tyneside, Northumberland, Wearside, Teesside, North Yorkshire and Durham together and they have a much bigger reach than ITV or BBC regional news.

I would have thought ITV North would probably be the most logical name, North East & Cumbria & South Scotland seems to be a mouthful to say.

I can't see why they can't give Cumbria and the IOM to Granada, Granada often mention Cumbria anyway, but I don't know who people in Cumbria think, so by this I mean would people in Cumbria prefer to recieve their Regional News from Manchester or Newcastle/ Gateshead?

I think the ITV North theory is correct. I reckon the south of Scotland will go to STV for a token price, which SMG will happily pay as it factors in to it's obvious plans to create a national Scotland Today programme. The Isle of Man will basically be forgotten about. The only way it stands a chance of being tagged on to Granda, as a previous poster suggested, would be if the Tynwald government complained BIG TIME (as I believe it should) that Manx issues will now be even more ignored.

Not sure if technically it would be possible, but I think they could split Border in thirds. The Scottish part would get News from STV or something. The northern half of the region would be given to Tyne Tees, (not sure if possible) and the southern half given to Granada (again, not sure). I'm sure ITV could some how start a bare-bones opt out for Border, using a Sky feed like what Spotlight CI does, since it wouldn't be possible with the current transmitter situation.

I'm not sure what your point is here.

National newspapers achieve much higher collective circulation than national news programmes in the same way (in truth the ratings for national news programmes are comparable to the local programmes themselves).

If you are suggesting that this is justification to can local news, then surely it is reason enough to get rid of the national news as well?

BTW you're not the same RB from over at NotBBC are you?