South West England & CI Thread

The first Good Morning West Country bulletin today was pan-regional.

Glastonbury Tor image on the studio screen, and news headlines from places as disparate as St. Ives and Swindon.

Had the "HTV"-only weathermap here in Brizzle though.

Whether that means that the weather was sub-regionally split, or whether viewers all the way down to the Isles of Scilly were subjected to the "HTV" weathermap, I don't know.

If the latter, then they would presumably alternate (i.e. showing the "Westcountry" weathermap pan-regionally in the post-7am bulletin)? I'll have left for work by then, so won't get to find out. I think that's what they do on bank holidays etc, when GMB starts at 7am so there's only two regional bulletins anyway.

Tonight’s ITV News West Country started with the pan-regional titles, and with the studio “windows” showing the generic CGI “gallery” backdrop.

The entire opening headline rundown also appeared to be a single pan-regional version. Jarringly, the 4th-and-final such headline was about Dartmoor, which is well outside of the “HTV” area.

The top story was about a police manhunt in a part of Somerset between Yeovil and Taunton, and therefore arguably in the overlap zone of the two sub-regions.

The 2nd story was about a paedophile couple who live near Exeter, but have connections to Gloucester serial killers Fred & Rose West. Hence, also arguably a story of pan-regional interest.

All studio links during the first 6 minutes of the programme retained the “gallery” backdrop.

When we cut back to the studio after the report about the paedophiles, the Clifton backdrop made its first appearance so clearly we were now sub-regionally split.

One of the pan-regional opening headlines was a generic “we’ll have the election results from across the region”. When it came to it (3rd item in the running order), here we saw election news for specifically the “HTV” area only.

It appeared to be reacting live to results coming in, and Ian Axton ad-libbed a time-check at 6:14pm, so I now assume that the “Westcountry” version was the pre-recorded one tonight.

After the election stuff, they moved onto various “HTV”-specific sport, human interest etc (none of which had formed part of the opening headlines).

At about 6:22pm came the aforementioned Dartmoor story, which was *just about* justified as being carried here on the “HTV” edition, because the reporter spoke to some people from Bristol who are participating in the organised walk on Dartmoor.

The programme did not revert to being pan-regional at any point after the 18:06(ish) split.

Since yesterday, the GWR weather sponsorship stings on ITV News West Country reverted to the previous style.

When they first became the weather sponsor (then still called First Great Western) a couple of years ago or so, the sponsor films featured panning shots of various locations and landmarks from around the west country (anywhere from Penzance to the Cotswolds might be depicted, pan-regionally), with a female voiceover saying things like "wind rustling" or "sky brightening" etc. Some variants even featured Tower Bridge in London (as the train services obviously connect this region to the capital)!

The sideways camera movement visually implied that the scenery was going past you, like the view out of a train window.

Coinciding with when the train company's name was changed to the current "GWR" name, a completely different style of stings was introduced. Featuring employees (e.g. train drivers, station staff etc) talking about their jobs and/or the weather, ending with a male voiceover name-checking the company. I always thought these were vastly inferior to what they replaced, and it was a shame to lose the stirring soundtrack/score of the previous style of stings.

The reinstated original style stings have now been re-edited to bear the current "GWR" logo, and seemingly the same female voiceover artist as before now gives the company name as "Great Western Railway" rather than "First Great Western".

ITV News West Country are currently streaming a Behind The Scenes live video on Periscope https://www.periscope.tv/w/1LyGBkVpYVMJN

There was an item on tonight's ITV News West Country about a man from the West who wrote a book telling the story of his mother's dementia.

It was followed by a studio interview with some medical expert, talking about dementia more generally. The Clifton backdrop remained on the "windows" throughout the interview.

However, the screen behind the interviewee's head had the pan-regional version of the programme logo on it, and all the camera shots of just her were framed such that the Avon Gorge "side window" was kept out of shot.

The "HTV" edition was clearly the pre-recorded one today (the lack of "Live" bugs during OBs is always the give-away).

I'll wager that cut-down clips of some of just her comments (excluding all wider shots of the set, and Ian & Kylie asking questions) were used in some dementia-related package on the other sub-region's edition? Probably appended to a related story about someone from that patch, do doubt.
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It's always cringeworthy spotting the "aggregate" items on ITV regional news. Tonight it was something about drivers breaking down on motorways due to not refuelling. Everything was totally generic, with not even any shoehorned-in one-line bit of lip-service to try and tailor it to each different region.

All the participants in the package had what I think were Yorkshire accents, so presumably a Calendar-originated package? At one point, the reporter's voiceover introduced vox-pops of people "at a motorway service station" (no more geographically specific than that)! Presumably, the originating region may have used a slightly different edit, that actually mentioned where the service station was?

It may be cringeworthy for you, but 99.9% of viewers don't really care.

Could it be that this be used as a warning to viewers to keep their tanks full during the warmer weather when people may be going on road trips for vacation err holiday? That being said if it was meant as a precautionary tale that could be heeded across the country I don't see why they couldn't mention the rest stop / location.

Tonight's ITV West Country weather was a pre-record from Meridian's chromakey, with Simon "Perky" Parkin (as Fred Dinosaur calls him).

I'm not a fan of the main evening forecast being done from the studio side screen, awkward camera angle and all. IMHO tonight really highlighted how much better chromakey is for weather forecasts.

Westcountry edition was live at Devon county show with Kylie and the two Bobs.

Wow blast from the past tonight with former South Today weather presenter Mike Powell reporting for Spotlight. Hopefully he will continue to pop up.

I'm sure I heard him reading the news on Radio 2 a few months ago ?

Tonight's ITV News West Country began with the pan-regional title sequence, and no opening headlines sequence whatsoever.

Ian Axton was alone in the studio, with the generic CGI "gallery" backdrop in place.

The top story was a generic (not even remotely regional) item about the risks of not wearing sunscreen. The lead package was voiced over by Kylie Pentelow, but she was not on screen at all during the report.

The various skin cancer sufferers featured during the lead package had different regional accents (mainly sounded like Yorkshire/northern accents to me), and were introduced without mentioning where any of them were from. I suspect that many/most/all regions had this package, with the voiceover script re-dubbed by their respective local presenters.

At one point the back/side of the head (but not the face) of a blonde woman (definitely not our Kylie) was seen nodding whilst an interviewee was talking. Presumably, she was a reporter from the originating region (e.g. Calendar?). She was not shown/heard speaking at any point - we only heard Kylie Pentelow's voiceover.

After another pan-regional link from Ian Axton in the studio, a large chunk of the programme was then a live OB of Kylie Pentelow on Weymouth beach (which firmly isn't in the HTV area!). She introduced various West Country-orientated packages about sun protection. Most of the packages were fairly vague about where in the West Country they were, although some stuff that would be clearly "wrong" for viewers in one-or-other of the sub-regions (e.g. Bristol Royal Infirmary) cropped up.

All the stuff about sun protection filled the entire first half-or-so of the programme. When Kylie handed back to Ian at around 6:16pm (still with the "gallery" backdrop"), he introduced a story about honouring a WW2 veteran at RAF Yeovilton in Somerset (a location which arguably is in the HTV/Westcountry overlap zone?)

When we cut back to Ian in the studio after the RAF Yeovilton item at about 6:19pm, were were *finally* into sub-regional territory (complete with the Clifton backdrop).

One of the packages introduced during the sub-regional latter part of the programme was yet another aggregate item, about ice-creams being delivered by drones. No secret was made of the fact that the story hailed from Lincolnshire (Ian Axton mentioned it in his introductory link)! Ian's intro also included the lamest possible excuse for including this well-out-of-region item here: "This idea *could* come to the West" Yes, it *could* also come to any other region. Or none.

That's ITV "regional" news programmes nowadays for you!