Central - huge job losses @ Birmingham & Nottingham

Sadly I have to agree with all of what you say. Leeds is very run down. It still has pastel corridor walls (from the Gyngell era). The good thing is that last time I was there it still said Yorkshire Television outside with the YTV Chevron. Granada seem to think that moving into this old warehouse is a step forward, one big modern production area!
Its all abig excuse to trot out the lowest common denominator of programme for the least amount of money, fleece advertisers and ignore public opinion. About time someone revolked a licence or two - stir things up a bit!

It is reassuring to read that despite the necessary job losses, Charles Allen is safe in his job.

<http://business.timesonline.co.UK/article/0,,9071-1014839,00.html>



So let us join with all stockholders of ITV, and let us encourage Charles Allen to swing the cost cutter's ax even more deftly and let the blood flow freely.

TV Forum should organise an electronic submission to nominate Charles Allen for his dedication and years of service to the television industry for the birthday honor's list.

If the chairman has a knighthood, then surely it is only fair that the chief executive should be similarly honored. Sir Charles has a nice ring to it do you not think?

Which would also end up with a large number of job losses in the regions effected!

Central still have their own TX (making them the only station in mainland Britain to have it), so it's not redundant. On that point, why has Central TX not been moved to London yet? I thought Leeds was going to be the backup if London went down?

I am a bit mystified as to where they are going to house Central News East in Birmingham. Gas Street was designed from the outset as a scaled down administrative base, with limited studio facilities for Central News West and CITV. Surely then, it's allready pretty much operating at capacity? They are going to have to keep a newsroom in the east midlands somewhere, why they can't keep a small studio too I don't know.

Maybe I'm missing something fundamental here, but is pulling out of Nottingham and relocating CN East to Birmingham the best approach to take? Birmingham might be their spiritual home, but I doubt ITV plc could give a toss about that, so wouldn't it actually make more sense to pull out of Birmingham and move Central's base to Nottingham?

That way, what are now studios could be converted for administrative tasks and housing the TX. And CN West, CN East and CITV would have ample studio space (with room to put CN South there in time aswell - which will surely happen eventually). This would surely make the Lenton Lane complex viable, with capacity for remaining studio space to be rented out, bringing in additional revenue.

And surely, land in Birmingham is more lucrative than land in Nottingham anyway, which I would thought would make it a lot easier for them to sell off Gas Street than it's going to be to sell Lenton Lane?

As I said, since they are now just interested in consolodation and not regionality, why must the midlands operation be based in Birmingham?


Doesn't explain why they have to do it in a 5 star hotel. With all this 'overcapacity' that they keep saying exists within ITV, surely they could find a room to hold a meeting in within their own premises?


Are they trying to rewrite history here? 'the top executives from ITV', 'the company'. Obviously this will have been the first time in 50 years that top executives have come together to talk about the company's future, because this is the first time in 50 years that there has been a company called ITV which has had any executives to discuss the future of the company. Really, I know they'd rather pretend that the bad old days of the ITV network never existed, but do they have to take it that far on their marketing talk?

Think you mean England, Scotland and Wales ae part of Britain



But CITV will be moving out thus freeing up some space for News East



Nice idea but how does that get rid of the problem of having a large underused, lossmaking studio centre?

Even with all 3 local programmes coming from Nottingham, they would still have the large studios sitting with exactly the same problem as they do now, they aren't being rented out enough.

I still don't see how moving Central News East's control room & studio to Birmingham will save any money in terms of people... you still need two crews doing both the West and East newscasts... you still need a second control room for East.... why couldn't they have just left those things in Nottingham? Surely they can even save studio space by just setting up the news set inside the newsroom using the work area as a backdrop.

It's all the ancillary stuff you need for a studio - the same broadcast infrastructure can be used for 2 programmes, staff can be shared between the 2 programmes meaning less staff (as illness and leave can be covered easier), only 1 lot of administration, only one set of engineers looking after the equipment, only 1 communications area, 1 VT library etc

It's similer to many TV operations - setting up a TV station or brand new studio is expensive and complex, but once it is there adding a second one is far less work as they can share a lot of facilities.

I believe the plan is to have a small newsroom and editing facilities in the East midlands - cut items will then be sent down to Birmingham for TX (in fact for news this is the only practical way covering news that far away can be done).

but where - they have 1 modest sized studio used for citv and central news (far too small to be partitioned and used simultaneously)

will central east use the virtual all the time - or will they convert some free-ed up office space into a studio for central east?

I'm sure that at least one of the articles suggested that a new site would be found in or around Birmingham to accommodate Central News East and West

EDIT - the second Broadcast piece said this:



And I think a Media Guardian piece had something more specific on this, but the site is down at the moment.

well yes, that is the obvious answer to the situation - but i would have thought any change of premises would have seen all 3 subregions housed together. it could have possibly even allowed citv and itv sport to stay put - i mean, surely finding citv a new studio is bound to cost more than sharing with a regional news programme.

plus there is also the timescale involved. finding/building new premises will take years, i get the feeling they want to dispose of lenton lane asap.

Manchester or London.... it's yet to be decided

sorry, my post wasn't very clear, i meant where will central east move to within gas street.