ITV London Tonight

Advantages since Monday, the set is cleaner, picture quality is better and Nina presented a full week. That's all I could find.

At this rate, the BBC and whoever operates the Channel 6 local licence for London have an open goal.

One ITN-produced package on tonight's bulletin, and one borrowed from FRIDAY's Meridian Tonight.

The Holland piece I mentioned earlier this week was aired on Meridian on the 27th September!

Philippa Drew also with the weather from Whiteley. Clare Nasir is there tomorrow though according to her Twitter.

I haven't seen London Tonight since these changes but the current situation with the programme doesn't sound good at all. One can only feel sorry for ITN who are, I guess, doing the best they can in the restrictive environment created by ITV.

I knew there was something odd about the map...

This is bad mind you. All this cost cutting is bad for regional news, and I've noticed on North East Tonight our local opt out used to be 15-18 minutes (regularly 18 mins) now its more like 11-15 minutes. And we've been getting border reports during the Tyne Tees segment- and when I watched with a friend they were like 'what's this got to do with the North East' and we did the other day have a report from Central about George Micheal perfoming in birmingham before coming up to Newscastle in a few weeks. We do get Yorkshire reports too- two the other day so unfortunately London, although the most severely so far, London isn't the only region affected.

Weather is no big issue really- Tyne Tees weather on weekends always comes from Leeds unless Kerrie is on holiday. And for a time, before Ross came up from Anglia the weekday weather was coming from Leeds too.

Packages from neighbouring regions are fine if they share the editorial area, yet one package from Meridian had such a tenuous connection as the correspondent voxed a student from Loughton, yet was aimed at the Meridian audience.

Don't these examples make a mockery of ITVplc's commitment to return to 19 regional news programmes, if they are even fudging production of their current meagre offerings for London and the 'mega-regions'?

Perhaps I'm cynical in believing that promise was for the benefit of a regulator who seems more than happy to push through Channel 3 license renewals on any excuse, rather than actually do their job and conduct a proper franchise round.

Cutting and pasting reports from 'mega-regions', wrapping them in psuedo-local programme titles, then passing it off as a new commitment to regional TV, isn't going to fool viewers with access to more than one region: so how can it possibly fool the state regulator.

Perhaps Ofcom is complicit in this deception of the public: either that or they are fundamentally incompetent.

Well I agree but a border story during the Tyne Tees section is wrong as is a tenuous link to George Michael performing in Birmingham. I mean getting Yorkshire reports is fine Usaully.

The studio door has moved:
http://www.itv.com/news/london/2012-10-06/matts-blog/

Yesterday's programme blog, wheres todays? Along with any weather videos?

Not really. We're just using the other door!