Eye in the Sky

This is a multi-regional series that sees Granada's Lucy Meacock take to the skies, coast to coast across Northern England and looks like it will be shown across all GMG North regions. The first episode takes in the landscapes of Liverpool to Snowdonia, but my neck of the woods will be included in later episodes as I've seen the Humber Bridge in the trailer.

Basically, their version of Central's Sky High with Marie Ashby. One of the better more recent regional offerings I thought, starts Thursday 7.30pm ITV1.

Snowdonia? I didnt think Granadaland went that far into Wales.

It seems more and more regional programmes are being shown in several regions. 75% of the time West and Westcountry seem to show the same regional programme in both regions.

It's only being show on ITV1 Granada and Yorkshire

Tyne Tees have got "A History of Tyneside with Ant and Dec" which sounds interesting

I get the feeling this is just Yorkshire showing a Granada regional programme as Lucy Meacock is totally unknown in Yorkshire

Only Marie Ashby didn't present the last two series.

Lucy Kite did the last one (or was it last two ^ can't remember? ). Marie left Central in 2005 to work for BBC East Midlands.

I'm not sure if Lucy can do a third/second series though, as a Central South is to dissapear. I'm sure they'll find enough material for East and Western Midlands though.

It's funny how ITV regions can suddenly remember far-flung areas of their transmission areas (confer Granada 'coverage' of Gwynedd ^).

In the last series of Sky High , the county of Wrexham is part of the Central region! I don't imagine there are many stories about Wrexham on CNW?! However it is possible to pick up Central East from S.Yorks (esp around Maltby), curiously S.Yorks was left off the Sky High map!

It's not the first this year though, we had Ghost Stories which was shown on Granada, Yorkshire and Tyne Tees, and there has been this other stories programme on a Sunday teatime, which is made by Tyne Tees, but is being shown on Granada and Border as well as TT, I'm not sure about Yorkshire, even the sponsorship for that one is for 'ONE North East' or something similar.

Also note that the Thursday 11pm shows are being sponsored by Regency and under the title of 'ITV Regional Programming' a sad sign of the times.

From my dark and distant past, I am sure she worked on Northern Life in the mid eighties, so someone in North Yorkshire may remember her

Wrexham is covered by HTV Wales and they even have a news base there. However I understand its on the border of 3 regions - Wales, Central and Granada.

All of these following on from BBC NI's "Sky High" with Christine Blakeney...

Exact same music and same helicoptor pilot. Was "BJ" the pilot in the NI series? I always wondered if that was the same thing or something different.

There were similar series on ITV West a while back, presented by Richard Lyddon and on Border with Fiona Armstrong. I think Mr.Barry-Jackson was involved in those two as well.

Having seen leading regional presenters work on four versions of the show - Armstrong, Ashby, Meacock and Lyddon, Lucy Kite's rather lightweight fixed grin style suffers in comparison.

Yes, that's about right. I get all three in my house - though it's not the novelty now it once was!


ITV are really missing a trick with this series considering how successful "Coast" was for BBC2. If they could link it up so each region had their own version airing in the local slots, and then perhaps create a national series with one episode per region to either air on ITV1 or ITV3, they could have a surprise hit on their hands!