ITV wants to axe some regional news services

Surely there were supposed to be measures in place intended to prevent this happening when Carlton and Granada merged to form ITV PLC. Or did the fools in charge think OFCOM would ensure it never happened!

What is most ridiculous is how this can happen just days after OFCOM publish their review - with absolutely no chance for anyone to respond to their argument and offer alternatives.


It does all come back to them though - it might just have been delaying the inevitable, but if OFCOM had gritted their teeth and not given ITV their own way, this wouldn't be happening so soon.

This doesn't actually come in until OFCOM publishes it's final review which leaves staff not knowing alot.

My question is - will ITV Local be affected by all of this?

In my opinion, if there were to keep the setup on ITV Local as it is now and just do the cuts on television, it may host an opportunity for people to still get the news they want from their neck of the woods.

Does anybody know when these new changes will come into effect, too?

ITV Local will most likely change to mirror the redrawn regions map but behind the screens ITV Local employees currently paid by ITV Consumer will move over to ING and will report to the Head of News of each region.

Both those questions are dealt with in the letter from Michael Jermey I linked to in an earlier post.

ITV Local is a disaster. In some regions 5 or 6 views per video would be a good result.

Put it this was, more people read this thread today that visited an average ITV Local site: Cluncky player, linear approach to shows (no fast forward, rewind or pause!!!! in 2008!!!!!) little original content of value.

The BBC Radio Player was just as clunky and that plodded on for years

I'm sure it'll become more advanced in the future, ITV Local is still fairly new. The fact that you can watch a week's worth of bulletins is more than you get from the BBC regional pages at the moment

Tonight's Lookaround said that they would be moving to smaller premises in Carlisle. Also that out of the 64 staff at Border, 50 would be made redundant.

That's not a cut - it's a massacre!

Look North also mentioned that the Harraby studios will be sold, and in a nice touch, at the end of its report about the cuts at Border, Carol Malia (who started her career there) commented "well, what can I say - we all wish our colleagues in ITV across the region well". A nice show of compassion.

One thing is for sure. Eric Wallace and Allan Cartner - two of Border's most-respected faces - must be spinning in their graves at what has happened to the station.

Appalling.

The message this sends out to ITV employees must surely be thus: do not create a successful programme within ITV. If you do, you'll all lose your jobs, and your base will be closed.

Is it any wonder ITV's news services have gone down the drain when the company holds its employees in this much contempt?

I hope that every last viewer ITV has in the Borders now takes its regional news from the BBC -- and fails to switch over come 7pm. Same for the Westcountry. I certainly shan't be watching their tawdry little programmes anymore (not that I have watched much of their output for some time now).

Yep - I suspect they will have a small newsgathering centre in the region - with reporters, and possibly some desktop editing, and the odd camera crew to cover the region, but no real production presence.

Very sad - there is no way that this can be disguised as anything other than a reduction in public service. You reach a point where you ask yourself - why bother at all with regional news? It's not worth doing at all if you don't do it well...

I suppose we should be at least slightly grateful that the BBC invested in its regional news operations in the 90s and 00s, so at least we have one regional news operation with in-region presentation and production, and full programmes in all but two regions and sub-regions (The Cambridge and Jersey sub-opts are the exceptions)

Isn't it amazing that Channel will still be doing a live local 30 minute news programme for the Channel Islands, but the entire Thames Valley, South and South East regions will share a single programme with sub-opts?

Yes, but the distinct difference is that many millions used the "clunky" Radio Player while, as Gary has said, one man and his dog use ITV Local.