Reduction in news minutage for ITV News regions

West and Westcountry will both have their own bulletins (at least 20 minutes in the 6pm show), though of course both programmes will come from Bristol. I agree with you Mr Kite, what is the point of having separate Wales and West Licences? Surely it's time for England, Wales, Border and The Channel Islands to be included in one Licence with certain obligations for each Region? Broadcasting Regulation as a whole is incredibly outdated in this country in my opinion, especially when it comes to ITV.

Wales being a separate licence is long overdue but do agree it's kind of pointless if the franchises are never going to be put out to tender again. Sadly ITV rather than OFCOM now dictate the Channel 3 licences, so if ITV won't meet regional (and national) obligations OFCOM just reduce them rather than put the licence to the market to see if others will. There are clearly companies out there who would compete for the licence considering the interest in the local TV franchises.

It would be nice to see a change here in Wales, though it's probably a case of be careful what you wish for. At the very least though ITV Wales needs to be a separate operation to the network and feel like it has some control over it's own destinty, rather than it's fate being decided by London. BBC Wales still feels quite independent of the network, but ITV Wales feels like something that exists because it has to. so they do the bare minimum.

I think most of us would like our ITV region to have more independence. Shame it's not going to happen. I agree with you that if put to tender, there'd probably be no shortage in interest to provide existing public service commitments and more. Seems like the separate Wales license thing is little more than a political fob with no practical changes.

My question regarding West was whether it was going to merge with Westcountry in terms of franchising, not necessarily the services. I'm aware of the current merged service set up over two franchise areas (which also happens with the Meridian service around Oxford and even the West service from Ridge Hill). Having looked it up, it does seem that the idea is to merge them into a greater Westcountry franchise. It all seems a bit 'nations & regions' to me, purely for the sake of it.

Yes it does seem to be all one Westcountry franchise now. Indeed it does seem a bit like the 'Nations and Regions' approach (but with more sub-regions). I'm not sure where I stand on this, although admit in the past I saw benefits for this approach. If both the BBC and ITV officially took on the old 'Government Regions' it would tidy things up greatly, allow true competition between the two TV stations, allow for more non-News Regional programming (as surely there would be less News programmes produced?) and potentially help the Local TV stations gain an audience. However with this approach you may lose that 'local feel', although with the way ITV have swapped and changed their regions over the last decade...would there be much of a difference?

Actually, with ITV News West Country having been completely split in two recently, with no pan regional coverage, except on odd occasions for technical problems, it feels less like a combined region than it was when they first brought the Westcountry and HTV West regions together. All we really need is for ITV to open up studios in Plymouth again, and they would actually be totally separate regions again, rather than two totally separate regional programmes, one live, one pre-recorded, originating from Bristol.

It does make you wonder why they bothered with names like Westcountry Live and HTV News in the first place. I mean, 'ITV News West Country' just roles off the tongue, doesn't it?

It's not meant to, the way I see it ITV News is the name, with a subtitle to clarify it's the regional edition for your area. From a brand point of view it makes sense.

I think you may have misunderstood what others are talking about.

Yes we all already know that, in terms of the actual on-air news bulletins themselves, West/Westcountry is now *more* split than it was during the 2009-2013 era. But what's being discussed here is the legal broadcasting licence/franchise, not the on-air news bulletins.

The entire area from Gloucestershire to the Scilly Isles will become a single Channel 3 franchise in January 2014. Therefore, the two separate editions of ITV News West Country will be officially classified as sub -regions.

Each to their own, Jon. I guess Cadbury's Dairy Milk Caramel also makes more sense than just Cadbury's Caramel from a brand point of view. It sounds crap though and I would've thought how a name sounds would be at the uttermost importance of brand conception. Obviously not.

Exactly. It'll make no difference on screen, as ITVplc own all the franchise areas in question. They could merge the West area with the Tyne Tees license and it'd make no difference on screen. This is why I don't quite get the significance of a Wales only license, unless Ofcom are planning to auction it.

There was a blatantly shared story at the end of Calendar tonight, the most obvious or I've seen since the new arrangements started.

We had an item where Fred Dineage interviewed someone who is going to be in a show at theatres in our region next year.

Presumably said show is currently in theatres in the Meridian region at the moment.

Sounds a bit of a joke if that's the case.