West Television Thread

Just though I'd start a thread for the West TV region which programmes are broadcasted from Bristol and cover Bristol, Somerset, Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. Like most TV regions there is overlap and for example in football Swindon Town is also covered by Meridian/South Today and Yeovil Town by Westcountry/Spotlight.

BBC & ITV West TV also cover North Gloucestershire.

If you must.

Don't expect too much enthusiasm, though.

I live in the region and watch either BBC Spotlight or ITV Thames Valley.

You've really got it in for ITV West news, haven't you?

The "West of England" telly region isn't very big, right?

And, given the amount of overlaps with other regions (e.g. Southwest/South/WMids), and the fact that - allegedly - a lot of viewers in those overlap areas may be more likely to prefer the "not West" option, the area that definately recieves nothing but "West" telly is really small indeed.

So much so, that... is there any point in a "West of England" telly region even existing? Couldn't one or more neighbouring region(s) have its/their official patch extended?

Politically, isn't the "West" actually part of the wider "South West"? So couldn't the area just have a "North sub-region" variant of BBC Spotlight/ITV Westcountry? Perhaps Calendar-style (i.e. main programme only, all short bulletins pan-regional from Plymouth)? Or something?

It doesn't seem to really warrant being a region in its own right, IMHO.

Also, it's so far south, that it's not actually the " West " of England at all! If Wales were a region of England, rather than a different nation, then it would have the best claim to the "West of England" name, being as it is, er, on the exact opposite side of "The Midlands" to where "East Anglia" is!

So, as Wales exists, England doesn't naturally have a "West" (unless we slimmed down our definition of "Midlands", in which case Shropshire/Herefordshire etc would have the best claim to the "West of England" description).

Although not from the region, have watched a couple of editions of Points West via the net and must say that I like the studio layout - better IMO than Look North Leeds.

On the ITV side, I've always thought of that as the most sensible option and have been arguing in favour of it, both in private and at public meetings, since the days just after the ITA became the IBA.

The West was always the poor relation of Wales all through the TWW and HTV days. The one good thing that the new, corporate, ITV has done is to sever the connection between Wales and the West and replace it with a "loose association" between the West and Westcountry. I'd certainly be happy to see the association become tighter, with Bristol becoming a sub-region of Plymouth as you suggest.

On the BBC side, the same arrangements would be a sensible solution, though since the closedown of the old channel 5 VHF transmitter for south Wales and the West, there's been little or no connection across the Bristol Channel at the BBC.

And for the gentleman who likes the Points West, second-hand from BBC Three, studio, all I can say is that a nicely painted living room doesn't necessarily mean that the people who sit in it are nice.

The "nice" studio doesn't mean that Points West ever indulge in any hard-hitting journalism and suddenly become capable of doing more than just blindly reading out press releases without any question, I'm afraid.

I also think it would make sense to merge ITV West with ITV Westcountry. Never understood why part of the HTV franchise is in the West of England.

There WERE reasons, of technical geography to do with transmitter locations; and of financial support of the high cost (Welsh speaking) areas from low cost (English speaking) areas, back in the first days of the ITA advertising the franchise, but those days are long, long gone.

I agree with you, that a merger of the area from Gloucester to the Scilleys would now be (and would always have been) for the best, both for the BBC and ITV regions.

Before we get too carried away about abolishing an area that covers three counties (four if you include the City and County of Bristol) let's take a look at some mileages here.

Here in Gloucester it's 223 miles to Land's End. Isn't that a rather large region? Bear in mind that the old Grampian region, often quoted as being a huge and impractical area to cover wasn't much larger at 245 miles from Dundee to John O'Groats (plus the islands).

Taking the 223 miles in a northerly direction from here would see you just 20 miles short of the Scottish border, while heading into the south east you'd be getting your feet wet east of Dover at just 200 miles.

Why do we need to be dumped into a huge South west region when the current region is probably little smaller than say the South East region (two counties and no major city like Bristol)?. If we're talking of "economising" on regions surely there are far better cases for the 'chop' such as Yorks & Lincs or South East.

I really can't see the logic of creating a television region stretching nearly 200 miles, unless of course you really don't want to provide an adequate service. Having watched some of the ITV West/Westcountry joint regional programming there can be little doubt of ITV's intentions.

Yes there are great similarities between the West and South West, but enough to justify such an unwieldy area?

As an incomer to the West from London I find the regional content out here a relief after years of very poor regional programming since the demise of Thames, but then I don't have a grievance against any of the local employers.

Errrrrrrrrr?

Have you ever put a tape measure over the old region that we used to be stuck with?

From Sherborne and Yeovil in the south of the HTV West region to the northern most point of Anglesey in HTV Wales?

At least there's a chance one tank-full of petrol would get me to Sherborne to fill up again; there was never any hope of me getting to the garage in Llangollen that we used to get the commercials for.

A lot of regions are doing joint regional programming now though. ITV seems to be cutting down on regional output.