ITV wants to axe some regional news services

East Dorset, and particularly Bournemouth/Poole are not in the new 'West Country' Tx area, that area is predominately served by Rowridge (so therefore Meridian/BBC South). Stockland Hill (Westcountry) and Mendip (HTV West) signals are receivable in parts of East Dorset, but are not routinely used.

Oddly, Brekkie, people from Bristol and the environs do also refer to themselves as West Country folk, since they live in the western part of England.

That's been rather fortunate for ITV, as they've been able to use that nomenclature to tie the two regions together. Had they not managed to constantly confuse Westcountry/West Country viewers with the constant re-titling of the region between the name of the company and the 'name' for the region in various idents and weather sponsorships then the job might have been more difficult. It certainly wouldn't have been so easy under TSW!

Perhaps they should just call the region 'ITV West Country' rather than 'ITV South West'; although that would probably have to be done after DSO as the whole advertising campaign is engineered towards ITV regions as they legally exist, not as they are in practicality. 'ITV South West' is simply the stitching together of the runt from the Wales & West franchise with an established franchise to give it credibility.

The job is rather more difficult for Border/Tyne-Tees which share no common name for their part of the country other than "Up North, and a bit of Scotland" for the English executives in London!

Oddly enough both the River Tees and River South Tyne rise in Cumbria (the former on Cross Fell, the latter near Alston), so it would be alright for the Cumbria part of the new region.

Doesn't cater for southern Scotland though... maybe Tyne-Tees-Solway? Perhaps the Lookaround name can salvaged from Border, for the name of the new news programme-- since that's not geographically specific.

The Lookaround name is staying!! At least for the Border Region.

I've always thought it unlikely that they'd use a separate name for the opt given that they're trying to make these things seamless. I've always thought they might call the whole thing Lookaround though.

Presumably they'll deal with it by avoiding reference to the programme name during the pan-regional bits?

I think thats the plan now.

Not forgetting the Headquarters of HTV West was Bristol.

Am I right in thinking they'll be no local opt for Central in the East and West - it's just being merged into one. If so, I think they'd be the only merged region not to be having some sort of opt-out.

No a local opt for east and west remains...

It's 15 minutes at the start of the bulletin for Meridian, Westcountry/West and Border/Tyne Tees and 6 minutes (not at the start but after a few main stories?) for Anglia, Central and Yorkshire

So Anglia now mirrors Look East then?