ITV wants to axe some regional news services

take with pinch of salt. Its PR tactics: the classic trick of making a dire prognosis about a related topic (national news v regional) to take the impact out of a hot topic.

Politicians are often late to an issue; and the cuts to Itv regions have only just hit home. This is an important time (yet hidden) in the political cycle. This time before labour came to power a junior policy offical - james purnell, now in gov - came up with the basics for Ofcom.

Now, a prospective tory government are putting together plans for a new media regulator. Expect ideas such as removing gifted DTT spectrum from ITV and putting in on the open market, with part of the cash generated funding local PSB in EVERY area of the uk - not just the 'nations' to be put forward.

Well Gateshead does have the facilities to put out two entirely separate programmes live, but as you say it would be much cheaper to only consider one, and pre-record everything else.

If this is to be the case, however, I still wonder how they are going to do it.

Border's output, by all accounts is to be a 15-minute opt-out, with a six-minute opt within an opt for southern Scotland. Timing such a thing will be a nightmare, so either:

a) Border's sub will indeed be live, and will come from studio B,
b) It'll be pre-recorded, but two versions will be made (seems an awful faff-on if you ask me)
c) They'll record a 15-minute opt, then a six-minute one within that, and south Scottish viewers will be subjected to regular timing errors and cock-ups.

And meanwhile, having dedicated all this effort to Border just so half a million people get their sub-opt for political reasons, in the Tyne Tees area Bilsdale loses its opt altogether.

Nice one Grade.

Why don't they just do the sensible thing, give (or sell) south Scotland to STV, and just run TTTV as a NE&C area like the BBC? That way TTTV can just run three 6-minute sub-opts for the three opt-out areas, with much less effort.

I think Grade's words on national news are about right. Without a dedicated news channel, ITV News will be nothing more than an expensive millstone around the company's neck come full deregulation, and I see no reason why they should stop it -- this is of course assuming that the PSB requirements have ceased, and ITV has been cut free.



Let's hope that is true, I think it's the only way of guaranteeing plurality in the regional sector long-term.

Probably the best solution would be to do the 6'00" sub-sub-opt live from a second studio, or whatever you do pre-record it AFTER the 15'00" sub-opt, so that if you had to absorb a slight over or under run you could do it?

Surely the problem with that though is that if you're going to have a second live production at all, you may as well run it to the full 15 minutes or half an hour? After all you still need all the extra staff -- how much extra in real terms would it cost to produce a full parallel programme rather than a smaller bulletin?

Incidentally does anyone know when this is going to happen? Will it be on or near the new year, or will ITV just implement as soon as they are ready?

While I agree with where you're coming from with that, the Bilsdale/Pontop split has always been a bit of a problem, because the two areas have such a large overlap. There are Newcastle viewers using Bilsdale, and folk in Saltburn, and along the coast as far as Staithes using Pontop.

This is of course completely true, however you could say the same of the Bilsdale/Emley Moor overlap. There are people in Bradford tuning into Bilsdale; receiving a broadcast tailored to North Yorkshire and bits of the NE is one thing, receiving one tailored to a mostly Newcastle/Sunderland one with bits of Dumfries and Stranraer is quite another.

Bilsdale has always been a bit of a poisoned chalice all round. It was partly responsible for the near-bankruptcy of TTTV in the 70s, countless feuds between YTV and TTTV over the years and now, as you say, could be being used as an excuse to lessen the service to England's largest county.

I think there's a misunderstanding of the Border / Tyne Tees plans... There is no plan for a South of Scotland sub opt in the 15 mins 'Lookaround' opt in the new combined programme. There is instead a commitment that at least 6 minutes of the 15 minute 'Lookaround' will contain South of Scotland news. This will also go out in Cumbria, it's not a separate service - they're just promising a rough balance during the 15 mins of South of Scotland & Cumbria news. It's all there in the Ofcom plans if you read them carefully...

http://ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/psb2_phase2/psb2_phase2.pdf

Aha! Now we get to the bottom of it. Thanks for that.

It would also seem that Westcountry's regional opts are to be scrapped by the look of things.

One thing that you can compare it with is the Yorkshire split region, whether you split it like the BBC do or like ITV do, there is so much overlap that half the stories on Calendar are shared across both versions anyway

The 'main headlines' and the light features are often so 'big' or 'generic' that they appear on both shows meaning it is only news in brief that differs

Hence I don't feel reverting to one edition of Calendar will be a great loss, and if this applies on Tyne Tees then having 2 seperate programmes was possibly over the top here as well

It's still a fudge as far as South Scotland is concerned. ITV had the ideal solution - to split Border's area up - and as usual, they botched it.

I agree that it’s shock tactics on the part of Grade – but he’s acting with impunity and Ofcom have been doing a fantastic impression of Neville Chamberlain.
Ultimately if ITV resembled a network in half-decent shape we wouldn’t be in this situation. I agree with the earlier post that suggested if ITV had invested more money in programming over the years, (rather than squandering it on everything else) – it might be in better health today.

The news division of a network represents it’s crown jewels. It’s not there to turn a great profit (if it was then Rupert Murdoch would have pulled the plug on Sky News years ago).

But it’s like having a giant expensive Porsche parked outside your house – symbolises you’re a player.