ITV wants to axe some regional news services

Whilst I agree with your sentiment - the fact is that if you add the two BBC bulletins together the result is a lot larger than adding the two ITV bulletins together. (ITV regional news is tanking in the ratings nationally, and the ITV national bulletin is not doing as well as it was previously. For a while the Six was losing ground to it, but the Six has moved away again.)

ITV (including GMTV) seem to have a "problem" with news in general, with GMTV behind Breakfast, the lunchtime news audience dwarfed by the One O'Clock News, and the BBC News at Ten O'Clock averaging double the audience of the News at Ten on ITV (and beating it even more if you look at all 5 weekdays)

I wonder if ITV will use this as a justification to yet further reduce their national news funding in the same way...

Which is a reason for criticising ITV, rather than the regional news sector.

There's a very good reason ITV is losing the news battle -- it's because it has become tabloid, low quality, sensationalised and media-obsessed rubbish over the last five or more years.

As someone who used to watch (and trust) ITN if anything more than the BBC, I won't go near ITV's bulletins now. Even on the rare occasions I have been watching ITV's output and it cuts for the news during the week, I will switch to the BBC to see the news broadcast. I cannot be alone on this issue.



A problem that seems to stem from the decision to rationalise the broadcasts and make them all the same. In my local area, Tyne Tees were still giving the BBC a good hiding well into the 2000s, but that has all ebbed away now.



I think it is coming, yes.

Bottom line is this: ITV have no interest in being a PSB anymore, so it is time to cut them free. Who knows, selling off the C3 frequency to someone else may result in some interesting new services.

If it's of interest to anyone, I've uploaded ITV News' story on the regional changes. It has some nice shots behind the scenes at Meridian:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=noFQsDws5ik

Is ITV Westcountry the only region that still currently does sub-opted news round ups in the middle of the main programme?

I believe Borders does it! and both STV stations

Border does it for the South of Scotland for six minutes during Lookaround. AIUI the proposed new arrangement will be that, out of a thirty minute programme broadcast from Gateshead, the first five and last ten minutes will cover the entire existing Tyne Tees and Border areas from South Ayrshire to North Yorkshire. From 6.05-6.20 the Border TV area will get "Lookaround" covering Cumbria, the Isle of Man and Southern Scotland, with a six minute opt within the Border opt for the South of Scotland. All of the output will be broadcast from Gateshead, and not Carlisle. It sounds unworkable. Will viewers in the South of Scotland really want to sit through a programme dominated by news from Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside just on the off-chance there might be something interesting on from their own region. OFCOM has more than hinted that, come 2013, the South of Scotland will become part of a Scotland-wide franchise area. It would surely be better to do that now than inflict a ludicrously irrelevant "local" news service on South of Scotland viewers. Someone living in Peebles, about thirty minutes drive from Scotland's capital, will receive a "local" news service dominated by coverage of cities 100 miles away and in another country! Franchise areas have been redrawn before. In the 70s Belmont was "given " to Yorkshire TV despite much local opposition from people who were happy with Anglia. And Border itself obtained transmitters in South Cumbria which were originally relays of Winter Hill and broadcast Granada. That caused some upset too, but Border argued that it needed the South Lakeland area to remain viable. At the time (the early 80s), cash-strapped Border closed down at 11.30 each night while Granada screened late night programming.

ITV Westcountry still does it, but only on analogue and DTT. ITV never bothered putting anything other than the south opt on DSat. I assume it's the same on Virgin.

Agreed. If you are going to have a 15-minute opt, why not just go the whole hog and broadcast a full Lookaround programme, but with cross-interest material for the final ten minutes shared between the two programmes but headed up by different newsreaders? And also, rather than having a six-minute "opt-within-an-opt", which is a ridiculous notion if ever I saw one, why not just merge the two, which would add a further six minutes to the programme?

It's still not an ideal situation, but it has to be better than the ridiculous kludge they've dreamt up here.

My understanding is that in most cases the sub-regional opts will be pre-recorded - so making them 10 minutes rather than 30 minutes is much more feasible if you have to record them prior to TX. It also allows them to use the same presenters in both regions presumably. Both of these moves save significant amounts of money (only one gallery and studio required, only one set of presenters etc.)

You COULD try and pre-record links only but not include the VTs, when pre-recording the sub-programme, but timing such a show would be nigh-on impossible.

Is it planned to shut the Plymouth Westcountry studio - or the Bristol HTV West one?

There's a rumour , and I stress that that's all it is, that both will close and the programme will come from Whitely.

Yep - had heard that rumour, along with Anglia and Central closing their studios in Norwich and Birmingham, and the studio elements of the show moving to Leeds.

If the current set-up of three shows (Thames Valley, South and South East) from Whitely drops to one core "South" show with two sub-opts ("Thames Valley" and "South East") then three studios might be overkill, and you'd probably only need two. That does leave a modern, cheap and cheerful spare studio free potentially doesn't it?

Recording two sub-opts and doing a live main show from one studio might be pushing it, but doing two live main shows and three pre-recorded sub-opts from three studios could be do-able.

If you tried to make all three versions of the "South" region look the same, with the same presenters, it might be a bit of a challenge? You could play clever though - and single-head the sub-opt - so you could record two sub-opts at the same time in different studios, with one main presenter doing each, and then use both main presenters together for the live double-headed pan-regional bulletin.

If this was done well then you might not notice the joins? You couldn't label anything in the sub-opt as "live" though...

Looks like Michael Grade has given up on the entire concept of news for ITV – not just regional. It’s astonshing he can envisage no national news in ten years time. His uncle must be spinning in his grave.

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