So does this mean that ITV regional news programmes that don't have DOGs yet are going to get dogs telling us the name of the programme with the ITV Local website address underneath... or will they just have a web address DOG?
It looks like ITV Local is getting ready for a full launch across the regions in the very near future if DOGs are starting to appear... but the areas that don't have an ITV Local website yet still have their old itv.com sites running at the moment.
Can someone explain to me, though, why the future Westcountry ITV Local website states its for "ITV Westcountry and the West of England" when ITV West has it's own ITV Local site?
Well spotted James. I've a horrible feeling what's going on here...
A few years ago ITVplc formally separated its operations in Wales and the West - a historic legacy of HTV. But rather than making the West a stand-alone region there was some integration with Westcountry.
Recently, West and Westcountry have been sharing an awful lot of non-news regional programmes. If two of the regions owned by ITVplc were to merge, they'd be the obvious candidates - Michael Grade has hinted that the future may lie in larger regions.
So what's the betting that further integration between West and Westcountry may be on the cards? As the Central South/Meridian West/Thames Valley affair showed, it seems ITVplc can now play around with the English regions without a public consultation.
I wouldn't be surprised if Meridian, West and Westcountry were all merged into one region - just like the Radio Times has done.
It already happens on Spotlight as there are some stories that cover parts of Dorset that border with the SW as Dorset is really on the border of both the South and the West (in the case of ITV, part of the county is served by Meridian, the other part by HTV West)...
I think that in terms of TV coverage all the English counties seem so close together that TV companies are starting to think it's better having one news programme serving a large region rather than seperate news services for each region... but it's not really... because while one part of the country may gain extra coverage, another will lose out.
Tyne Tees started using theirs on Wednesday, and I think the font is too small, theyve tried to cram North East News/ North East Tonight into the same size dog, and the font has been made much smaller, its just about readable.
Maybe losing Wesley and Thames Valley Tonight wasn't such a bad thing on the basis of that picture.
Mary Green is nothing compared to Hannah was like or even Anne way back. A very interesting partnership Wesley and Mary are and isn't doing him much justice.
