SW England news thread

Can somebody get some caps of Westcountry News' titles? Cheers!

Just bringing this topic back up to say I was very surprised to see former Children's BBC broom cupboard presenter Simon Parkin doing the weather forecast on Westcountry Live on Friday night!

Has he left Real Radio then? Or does he do the weather forecasting as freelance, and was it done from HTV or has he moved down to the SW?

I think he must be freelance as he presents BBC Somerset Sound's saturday breakfast show as well.

An unusual choice for a weather bloke isn't he . His presence adds to a number of itv weather men in the west now .

He's going to be a very busy boy if he keeps on with radio work too.

Simon Parkin is covering for Kate Reeves, who's on maternity leave.

More details here

There was a bit of a technical fault here in the Westcountry during the Evening News earlier today. At the end, when it went to the regional headlines, we just got an "itv Westcountry Live" caption screen, with no headlines.

I haven't seen this happen before. Has it happened in other regions before?

Two very well know ITV programmes then - not. Both regional Meridian programmes I seem to remember, the later being on for less than five minutes. Also love the fact they advertise him as former GMTV presenter, surely he's not very well remembered from there?

I remember him for working in McDonalds more than anything

Evening
I miss Westcountry Live, certainly one programme that has improved over the years. Please correct me if I am wrong but is Westcountry Live the only regional news programme to have regional regional news when it splits itself four ways north east south and west?

Does anyone remember the time Linda Ward asked her boyfriend to marry her at the end of her late night bulletin?

Anyone with caps of the programme please display them

If you mean opt-outs from the main bulletins at 6 then no. ITV Yorkshire does it splitting North/East and South too. And, up until Mike Nevilles health problems, ITV Tyne Tees used to do this too. Not too sure about any other ITV regions though. STV are soon to start this optout service too.

Anyone catch the end of the 18:30 Spotlight tonight?

The had an interview with Richard Baker towards the end, so finished on a 1960s or 1970s main news end sig.

Nice touch.

If you mean opt-outs from the main bulletins at 6 then no. ITV Yorkshire does it splitting North/East and South too. And, up until Mike Nevilles health problems, ITV Tyne Tees used to do this too. Not too sure about any other ITV regions though. STV are soon to start this optout service too.[/quote]

Thanks werent Westcountry the first to do it though. I remember when they opted out to their regional studios then it became the north east south and west split. I can remember the hour long westcountry live with Ron Bendalls weather forcast. Has anyone got any caps or no of a good website with westcountry stiuff on it?

Some new graphics on Spotlight lately... the weather map has had a slight addition of ripples in the sea instead of just plain blue, I think this was introduced a few days ago... but today they've got new look astons, similar in style to the National news ones... with a grey name bar and a transparent black bottom bar, a red stripe down one side and on the left hand side it has BBC in the top half and Spotlight in the bottom half... LIVE astons are now transparent red and black...

That's about the best I can do to describe it, perhaps someone can get captures in the bulletin before CBBC or at 6:30...?