The Newsroom

ITV wants to axe some regional news services

From 17 to 9 (September 2007)

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SO
Steven O
RJG posted:
The late Pat Doody was, for a time, a presenter on Radio 2 and was married, at one time, to Jean Challis from the same station. Michael Rodd, later of Screen Test and Tomorrow's World was a reporter with Border in the 60s and used to perform a topical news calypso with guitar accompaniment on a Friday night. And does anyone remember a continuity announcer called Daphne Neville? She'd acted in Crossroads at one time but distinguished herself in one local bulletin by putting the male bird into Cockburnspath (which is pronounced Coburnspath). The original Lookaround presenter was Scottish poet Maurice Lindsay, complete with trademark bow tie.


The irony is that viewers in Co'path - to give it its local parlance - wouldn't have seen the cock-up as the Lammermuir hill range separates it from the Border region; it gets STV instead.

I'm sure Pat used to do voiceovers for ads on Metro Radio in the early 80s as well.

His death came as a shock - one day he was reading the headlines on Border; the next day, he was making them, as news broke of his death. It later emerged that he had had personal and cashflow problems, and took his own life.
SO
Steven O
jason posted:
There seems to have been an awful lot of staff exchanges between Border and Tyne Tees over the years. Pat and Allan were both TTTV announcers for a long time as well as working over in Carlisle, and Michael Rodd presented numerous business-related offerings for TTTV in the 80s. Eric Robson was another one who worked at both companies, and ISTR that Lyn Spencer worked for some years on Mr and Mrs as well.

There many others over the years as well.


Allan of course was the man who brought down the curtain on continuity from City Road in 1996. At Border, he did his links both in and out of vision, but I can't recall him doing his links in vision on Tyne Tees.
:-(
A former member
He never did.

Even in the 1970s he was out of vision, at a time when continuity announcements on TTTV would commonly last 2 or 3 minutes during the day.

When there was a need for a CA to read the news, they'd either have a news slide with a caption reading "Read by Allan Cartner", which was a very strange thing to see, or they'd draft an announcer or news reader into the continuity studio, who would commonly then introduce the next programme in-vision. Seeing the like of Shiela Matheson introduce the late film was also a bit bizarre!! The same routine would be employed on the birthday greetings and Lookaround. I never could work out why he didn't just appear on-screen.

Another Border staffer, Clem Shaw was the same, although he didn't cover so often, and even Jonathan Morrell was an out-of-vision only announcer for the first couple of months, although by this stage the news wasn't read by CAs so was less of an issue.
BR
Brekkie
noggin posted:
Brekkie Boy posted:
noggin posted:
Of course there is a very strong argument that regional identity doesn't make a profit - and ITV doesn't exist to serve us, it exists to serve its shareholders... It isn't a charity, it is a business... The licence to print money expired a while ago I guess.



Though of course if OFCOM stood up to ITV and told them they'd lose their broadcast licence if they failed to deliver the regional service, they'd have to serve us to be able to serve the shareholders.


I've said this several times before - but the solution IMO is to let ITV run the "network" service, but just like GMTV is a seperate franchise to provide the breakfast programme, resell the franchises to provide the regional content - all the regional news plus a quota of regional programming per week, with ITV having to estabhlish fixed slots. I'd say 6-7pm on Sunday, 11pm-midnight one day during the week.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would still operate under the existing system, where technically the "regional" franchisee would also control the "network" output, so have more flexibility in scheduling etc.


But who would fund the regional franchises - I'd be very surprised if the advertising revenue generated in their ad breaks covered the cost of running a decent regional news operation. Local news has never been cheap to make - the number of staff required to make a 30 minute local news programme alone is not insignificant - and they need to be paid, given holiday, sick pay, pensions etc. - and studio premises, regional newsrooms etc. need to be paid for. News operations are seldom high profit set-ups.

It is entirely possible that regional newspapers would be interested in running them I guess...



Of course it's risky, but hopefully competition would force would be broadcasters out of the woodwork - I guess you're looking mainly at the small indies set up around the country.

It would have to be underwritten by ITV (i.e. if no one bids for a regional franchise, as the network franchise holder ITV are obliged to provide the service) - but I think if they risked losing it, ITV might become alot more interested in regional content again. I'm sure Sky would also be interested in some of the bigger regions too - and though that might be as unwelcome as Carlton, it might be a price worth paying.
SO
Steven O
jason posted:
When there was a need for a CA to read the news, they'd either have a news slide with a caption reading "Read by Allan Cartner", which was a very strange thing to see, or they'd draft an announcer or news reader into the continuity studio, who would commonly then introduce the next programme in-vision.


The caption sounds more the like the kind of thing that Border would have used. Interesting to read that he never appeared in-vision at Tyne Tees; having seen him on Border, I found this strange.
FN
From Norwich
Frankly OFCOM need to offer ITV plc the opportunity to sell advertising space to the highest bidder (ie throw away the CRR arrangements) but this has to be upon agreement that ITV continue with its regional commitments.

I think that this is Grade's ideal - He knows that OFCOM are unlikely to allow the regional commitments to be compromised, but they are likely to allow an increase in advertising revenues.

Sadly this is where the 1990 Broadcasting Act compromises OFCOM - they should have the option to relet the ITV regional franchises if ITV are not delivering best value. A little competition would soon focus ITV on what they should be delivering.
NE
nezza
If the provision of local news were to opened up to companies other then Central et al then realistically only the big media players would have the clout to provide an alternative.

This raises the worrying possibility of Murdoch gaining a foothold but who else would be able to do so? Here's one possibility:

"This is ITV 1 For Yorkshire. Now the latest news from Virgin in Scene At Six"
:-(
A former member
The franchises run until 2014 -- all you have to do is let out a package of slots on terrestrial ITV1 to tender -- on the basis that they have rights to prime-time terrestrial ITV slots in return for running the regional franchises. ITV can then run its satellite channel in any way it sees fit.

Then watch ITV frantically buy up all the slots so as not to lose valuable advertising revenue on DTT channel 3, and at that point they'll be locked in to providing the requisite cover.
NE
nezza
If that happened then maybe ITV would be forced into providing quality programming and maybe decent news. Try Calendar becoming a pure hard news and current affairs programme with all the entertainment and lifestyle stuff shunted to a seperate programme such as "Tonight" did in the late 90's and early "noughties".

8 days later

LO
Londoner
Early day motion in the Commons:
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=33976&SESSION=885

8 days later

KE
kernow
There are rumours that if the proposed mergers go ahead, the merged Westcountry/West programme could come from Whiteley, to make the best use of studio space there.

Apparently, they want to do 10 minute pre-recorded "opt-outs" for the different areas, but done by the same presenters of the main programme (i.e. recorded at Whiteley), so that they don't look like opt-outs.

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=141507&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232739&home=yes&more_nodeId1=201778&contentPK=18729452
NE
nezza
That's probably the best way forward. Create a unified programme but ensure that the different areas are represented.

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