More Changes Ahead for ITV News

I went to the RTS Awards in Liverpool last month where Granada Reports won the award for Best Regional News Programme.

I know So Rahman does other things like ITV News Channel and London Tonight, but, is all of this in practice for a possible move with ITV News in London.?.

Realisticly, regional news should come from the Region it represcents, but in reality is could be done from anywhere.

www.benjaminfshatliff.com/granadareports

That is the website I set up for the programme, which they know about at Granada.

Let's keep Regional News Local, with its own identity.

They will keep the programme local, they will kepp it in the North West no matter where it comes from, obviously Manchester is the preferred choice. But as I said I am pretty certain that they have to oblige to regionality, though the new ITVplc couldn't care less about regional identity they still want to keep a production base at Manchester and that involves News I assume.

But it's not like the North West is a small place, geographically after the Carlton / LWT, Central and Yorkshire regions Granada is one of the biggest after those and it would be a good idea to keep it local as there are people watching. It's not like sub opt outs, considering Calendar East comes from Leeds, though really Leeds isn't that far from Hull, only something like 70 Miles, its nothing, but London is over 200 Miles and you can tell the difference. Same with the Weather though it comes from Leeds, it's still Northern, again its only about 70 Miles from Manchester to Leeds.

Just had a look on your site too, it's alright, better than the official Granada site! (When talking about Granada Reports that is)

BTW What happened to The Official North West Thread? About time someone revived it.

Is this just a Granada thing or can we expect it to be rolled out across the entire GMG network or the whole ITV network?

If it is rolled out across the ITV network, like the BBC, will the theme tune be like the national news?

I'm pretty sure it's all the regions. Why would they bother with just one?

Given the reaction of SMG to the ITV merger, I take it that they won't be adopting the new look? It would make no sense anyway for the Scotland Today set to be blue and yellow, given that they're not the corporate colours for Scottish.

So would I be right in thinking that the new identities won't be rolled out across all fifteen regions?

Well, it's about time HTV News had a revamp - and probably a rename. (Wales Today could also do with a refresh). And Granada Reports still looks terrible, so I imagine ITV plc will come up with something better.

In these cases, it's best to reserve judgement until the programme begins, but from ITV's perspective, it makes perfect sense.

I know what you mean. I've never seen Granada reports, but if Southampton's Meridian Tonight loses that fantastic music (and titles) I won't be very impressed - it's the "newsiest" news theme tune I know of, and it's brilliant.

The deregionalisation of ITV continues then...

(Although anything would improve Westcountry Live - maybe ITV plc could take control of "failing" news programmes only?)

Well on the last 2pm edition of Scotland Today, they said they would be back in the new year with a 'new look'. In my mind it won't be long before there is ITV1 Scotland. Scottish/Grampian could have any idents they wanted, yet they stick with the itv1-style, just changing yellow to blue.

They do that in Australia, so who knows what will happen to regional news in Britain in the near future...

Again? They changed this time last year!
Although apparently bits of the current set aren't entirely stable. I'm told they occasionally have to call in someone from Crafts to hold up bits of the backdrop during bulletins.

Set your videos for Feb 2nd 2004..... in all ITV regions