Regional news boundaries

STV North and Central is a bit of pot luck the further down Scotland you go.

South Perthshire technically is STV North and should get the news from Aberdeen l, but due to the signals being blocked in some areas from the North Transmitters and Relays get STV Central from Blackhill and news from Glasgow.

I can imagine that the cross-border transmitter situation eg for those on the English-Scottish border must lead to some kind of disassociation as regards which news they get. Those that live on the extreme thresholds of the STV/Border-Tyne Tees area might not be getting the news they feel is theirs.

https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/advertising-on-itv/regional-advertising

I didn't realise Border's area was as big as it is. I thought STV would have gone further south.

Border pre merger did cover quite an area. It may have even been receivable in Northern Ireland.

If your in the Larne area and around there then I think you receive Lookaround. funny thing a bridge was Larne to Portpatrick in Scotland was planned

Looking at a map like that (I know its ITV but BBC's boundaries are fairly similar), it would make sense to merge South Today (Oxford) and Look East (West) into a separate region,

I imagine back in the boom years of the BBC, they might have done it. Even if they had money to do so now, they'd be criticised spending in the perceived well healed home counties

But, looking at this official map, the Oxford region goes into Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. The East (West) region goes up to Cambridgeshire and western Norfolk.
It would be a huge region, going from Swindon to Peterborough. They are opposite sides of the country.
News coverage-wise, I don't think it'd be better than the current Oxford/Southampton situation.

There's only one answer to that:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=What+a+Mess+Cartoon&&view=detail&mid=BD1B4867A01B8D3C6BF6BD1B4867A01B8D3C6BF6&&FORM=VRDGAR

Back in the boom years (late 80s) Oxford was given a TV reporter, producer, crew and a remote studio for the first time, but as part of Newsroom Southeast. Getting their own sub-opt ten years or so later was a big step forward. Merging with Cambridge would only subsume them again into part of a much larger area with which they have little in common.

It was actually planned in the early 2000s, I think. It would've been a totally new region independent of either BBC South or BBC East. I recall the plan was for the HQ to be in Milton Keynes. Presumably BBC Radio Three Counties would've moved too, although Milton Keynes is pretty much on the edge of that area.

I still think merging Oxford and Hannington would be the better route; akin to Meridian Thames Valley. That would be a decent size for a standalone region. BBC Cambridge is already large enough in its own right, in my opinion.

EDIT: just looked up the plans from 2004 and it seems I misremembered and Oxford wasn't involved, just the west half of BBC East. Not sure why they wanted to move to Milton Keynes rather than broadcasting from Cambridge as they still do...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/06_june/29/bpv_mk.shtml

I think Divis would be much more powerful in Larne, so UTV would be the "default" region but it is easy to receive Border or STV in much of the eastern coast of Northern Ireland. In my parents' house in Bangor you can see Scotland on a clear day and it is straightforward to receive the Cambret Hill transmitter. Back in the analogue days I was able, on occasion, to receive STV, Grampian and Border, with BBC Scotland, BBC NE&C and BBC North West available too.

Wasn't the Milton Keynes base supposed to have used the old BBC/OU production centre there? In fact didn’t BBC East host a CiN event there one year?

The BBC wouldn't have, and never will separate Hannington away from Rowridge. Too many viewers in South Hampshire and the IoW (as Meridian soon discovered)