According to the reports the £30M saving will be invested into new programming. Mmm, what can you get for £30M, 30 hours of prime time Drama/Comedy, hardly seems worth it to decimate their newsrooms. I suspect its just to cover the loss of income from their soon to be defunct quiz channels. Another Nail in the ITV coffin.
There is one other obstacle in all of this -- what to do with the Isle of Man? The names "Border" and "Lookaround" get around the regional identity issues the region has quite nicely, but that ain't gonna work for an expanded region.
Does anyone think ITV actually care what their viewers think - especially those small areas with their own distinct regional identities.
I think ITV are trying to get away with the very least they can in regional news commitment terms - the bottom line is the bottom line now.
> What will happen to Border's Scottish area, though - will this pass to STV?
Very likely to be honest.
For the new area to have any kind of local identity at all, it will have to identify with the North of England.
What I can possibly see happening is ITV paying STV to take over the news facilities of southern Scotland.
What's the betting that ITV pull a rabbit out the hat, and rename the programme "Northern Life" again? It will seriously hack off people in Cumbria, but I'm sure folk in Newcastle would be delighted. They may even be able to persuade Paul Frost back for a few months to cement the deal.
Sounds silly, but I can see it happening. They did it with Granada Reports/Tony Wilson after all.
There is one other obstacle in all of this -- what to do with the Isle of Man? The names "Border" and "Lookaround" get around the regional identity issues the region has quite nicely, but that ain't gonna work for an expanded region.
Doesn't the Isle of Man come under Granada? I know it comes under BBC North West (the programme's featured Isle of Man news for years, and for further reassurance, just take a look at the new NWT titles: the Isle of Man is included in the light beams).
I actually think this is a fairly good idea, on the whole. It's not necessary to have tiny regions when they could easily be merged. I mean, the Granada region encompasses Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Chesire, Lancashire and parts of North Wales (and possibly parts of Cumbria as well, though I'm not sure) which is a huge area. Some evenings, even they seem to be struggling to fill the programme, so goodness only knows what regions like Thames Valley do!
I don't see the big problem with regions and regional identity. The BBC don't do regional identity but do a few regional news shows, but if they do 9 or 17 I don't know.
I think you can get to a point where regions become so large that it's actually pointless providing a news programme for the area.
You simply end up with a situation where the majority of stories are from places so far away that you have no interest in them, and your locality gets such an infrequent look-in that the programme becomes a complete irrelevance.
Are viewers in, for example, North Gloucestershire actively going to tune in to a programme featuring stories from as far away as Lands End?
Inevitably viewing figures for regional news on ITV will suffer, which no doubt in a few years time will give them an argument for dropping the service completely.
I think you can get to a point where regions become so large that it's actually pointless providing a news programme for the area.
You simply end up with a situation where the majority of stories are from places so far away that you have no interest in them, and your locality gets such an infrequent look-in that the programme becomes a complete irrelevance.
Are viewers in, for example, North Gloucestershire actively going to tune in to a programme featuring stories from as far away as Lands End?
Inevitably viewing figures for regional news on ITV will suffer, which no doubt in a few years time will give them an argument for dropping the service completely.
No one really cares about regional news programming. This is a cost cutting measure designed to keep ITV afloat in the long term.
:-(
A former member
so how does STV get away with it ? have two newsroom severing 4million viewers?
It will seriously hack off people in Cumbria, but I'm sure folk in Newcastle would be delighted. They may even be able to persuade Paul Frost back for a few months to cement the deal.