ITV wants to axe some regional news services

So that would be something like :

ITV South West (Westcountry) and ITV West (HTV West) regions coming from one studio in Whiteley (with a pre-recorded 10 minute opt for one region being done before hand with the same presenters?) Presumably this means the end of all of the Westcountry sub-regions.

Now would that mean ITV South (formerly Meridian/TVS Southampton), ITV South East (formerly Merdian New Hythe/TVS Maidstone), ITV Thames Valley (formerly and now merged Meridian Newbury and Carlton Abingdon) all coming from one studio at Whiteley with 2 pre-recorded opt-outs (or would they keep Thames Valley separate?)

If that were the case then the entire South, South East, West, South West and Thames Valley regional news would all come from a single location. Great...

Well, noggin, there are three studios at Whiteley, so my GUESS (NO hard knowledge, before anybody shouts) would be one studio for Meridian South and South-East, with one of those having a pre-recorded opt; one studio for West and Westcountry, again with one of those having a pre-recorded section; and one studio for Thames Valley with the programme going straight through live.

A bit of deja-vu there, with some West output moving to the south coast. And what happened last time? First the south coast, then the South Bank!

Yep - that would make sense - if they can afford three production and presentation teams. However I suspect trying to pre-record more than one 10 minute sub-opt would be fun... At some point it ceases to be news and becomes history...



Yep - though there is a much stronger argument for news production teams to actually live somewhere near the regions they are covering... (I know ITV will say they have journalists within their patches soon, the programme producer will be in Whiteley.)

I had heard rumours that ITN had costed putting a bunch of broom cupboards at Grays Inn Road to do it all in London...

I think we might both have our ears to the same ground!

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

Torbay's Palm FM is reporting that a protest against the closure of Westcountry happened today. Did Spotlight or Westcountry News cover the story?

I'm not sure that arguments stack up. Bristol has just had a refit, and has newer kit than whiteley. The studios at bath road are in a conservation area thats is now quite strict, making the land value far lower than was thought by ITV property services initially.

It also has a larger 2nd studio, which is now wired upto the new news gallery -used on soccer night now - (as well as the normal ITV West studio) It is more flexiable than most sites.

the new 6PM show is being pitched as 'like the one show' to provide common interest programming for the bigger regions, with 10 min news opts. One of the sticking points is the facilites if some areas can no longer do the studio based items that were pitched. Bristol has an edge for this and other reasons.

One of the facts put about by those proposing these changes is that most BBC and ITV shows only do 8-10 min of hard news anyway (4 if your points west..) and that the rest of the fluff can be super regional.

I saw Spotlight cover the story. Gus Honeybun was shown back in Plymouth drumming up support for re-thinking ITV's decision to merge the 2 regions.

That's a very good point, actually! If you look at it that way, then the ITV proposals don't seem such a big deal.

Look at the BBC South Today situation. On Mon - Thurs, it's only the opening 10-15mins that have an Oxford split. This allows, say, Oxfordshire viewers to not have to hear irrelevant hard news from as far away as the south coast and the Isle of Wight (and vice-versa).

After all hard news could be things like, say, a local business closing and thousands of redundancies. That's the kind of news that may well have an impact on the lives of viewers in the same area, hence why "hard news regions" need to be fairly small.

On the other hand, the fluff that fills the latter portions of regional TV news is generally about subject matter that is only relevant the the very small number of people involved in what's being reported (e.g. the owner of the cat that had to be rescued from being stuck up a tree).

Therefore, it doesn't matter how near or far away from any given viewer in a region, a particular "fluffy" story is occuring - the reported event would have just as little impact on the viewer's life whether it was happing just-down-the-road, or at the furthest away end of an oversized region.

Therefore, there is indeed absolutely no big deal about the "fluffier" part of regional news programmes covering enormous geographic areas, as far as I can tell.

Interesting - though the quality of the longer films on The One Show seems to suggest that they have a budget far exceeding that of local or regional news programmes (either BBC or ITV)

They seem to be shot using decent crews, and many of them sound as if they have gone through a proper dub, and look to have been graded. Oh - and unlike almost every news report - they're usually stereo.

Many of them are also shot in multiple locations - and not in an hour or two on a Tuesday afternoon...

ITV Regional News may be able to do the content (and how long before even the new larger regions start sharing films?) - however I suspect the production values will be lower. Interesting that they are mentioning The One Show as a model though...

(I guess they have noticed that it is attacking Emmerdales share...)

Tell me about it!! The Grampian TV region is the size of Belgium and while your region has more folk than mine - people in Inverness and Dingwall have no interest in what happens in Aberdeen and Stonehaven!!

I suppose local news is something that will go to pot. It should be interesting to see what 'local news' is like in say 10 years.

The problem ITV have is the skill set of the staff and the workflows in use. This is not to blame the people working - its primarily a pay and training issue.

Most packages in the regional shows are quite poor, not just technically but in content; Good TV depends on knowing what the interesting story is for your audience and telling it from that angle - not just shots of people reading the words of their press releases and adding a piece to camera or VO over rushes.

ITV use an inflexiable workflow of either journo + Camera into a self edit OR journo+camera+craft edit. In the US and europe they use more VJ stuff for the low end, and VJ +Craft edit as well as the rest of the options for production. Bottom line, more variety.

ITV news group are always moaning about VJ's (self shooting video journalists) but thats poor training, not a fundemental issue with the technique.

And heres the problem: super region shows will need more craft items or live's to make them work. That will need a programme producer from a factual entertainment background NOT a ex journo; and forward planning will need to be far better than it is now. Which means you need staff with a better skillset and not just apponting from the pool of redundancies.

Though many factual entertainment programme producers have actually come from a news background and are ex-journos... Certainly not uncommon.

However taking a production journo who has only produced the current 30 min local news shows (and doesn't date back to the late 80s / early 90s) and hoping they will be able to produce a decent magazine show is a brave move...

Your other points about workflows are absolutely valid - though good story-telling is good story-telling. If you can't do that in local news, you won't be able to do it in a magazine show.