Itv Border Scottish Problems

You mean STV sent a feed to Leeds who then change the borders output to them?

I though Carlisle still control that

Carlisle is just an outside source switched into circuit at Leeds. Ditto Tyne Tees, Granada, Central etc.

Is the commentary team for STV the same as that on ITV4 (like UTV's is)? If that's the case there would have already been a feed going to ITV1 therefore would explain showing it without the STV DOG.

Yes, but the studio output isn't.

Yeah, I was thinking that, that STV would still have to provide the studio output to ITV1. Was that DOGged too?

Isn't Border Scotland, because it's officially a sub-opt, not equipped at Leeds with a full transmission suite?

ISTR that at one point they had to run all trailers, continuity and indeed programming from the same server that played out the ad-breaks, and programmes sourced from outside the Leeds gallery were switched old-style for the area -- the usual facilities dedicated to a proper region simply didn't exist for Border Scotland, hence the rather clunky and basic look to the whole thing.

Not sure if that is still the case, a lot of years have passed in the interim.

And of course, without an on-duty anno of any kind, when something like this does happen it all goes completely to pot.

I often wonder why they don't do in these situations what YTV did on a number of occasions on the overnight service shared between YTV and TTTV, where we had the faintly ridiculous scenario of the transmission controller at Leeds making announcements over the air.

Particularly amusing was one night in around 1995, where presumably the announcer at both TTTV and YTV had gone home early, the 11.40 programme had failed, and a squeaky-voiced bloke with the broadest West Yorkshire accent I've heard in a long time came on and apologised for not being able to air the show in question, and instead was some US import, the name of which escapes me.

What will actually happen to Border Scotland under the rationalisation plan for regional and sub-regional content currently being proffered by ITV? The plan is to shoe-horn into Tyne-Tees possibly augmenting this with one of the proposed 10 minute recorded "local" news segments.

This may play for Border Cumbria, but Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, no way! I'd suggest that there are several reasons why this is a likely candidate for an OfCom act of reticence - perhaps the onl one of the whole consultation?

Border was always a regulatory creation rather than a strictly commercial one, it was an IBA favorite eventually being bailed-out by the ITC when Border threatened not to bid for the license (who else would?) The territory had to augmented at Granada's expense before a bid could take.place. Varous vintages of regulator actually like the concept, and might be prickely about letting it go!

Border Scotland was, before devolution driven by sports coverage. After devolution the need for political coverage of MSP's activities underwriteds the concept of a sub-regional split in news.

SwitchCo and hence the licence fee payers and others have spent a lot of money engineering DSO so that Caldbeck can support both English and Scottish versions of Mux 1 and Mux2, blow me if ITV are going to be allowed to negate some of this purpose.

Presumably a compromise would be for the 10 minute recorded thing to play on all of Border's existing transmitters, but with Selkirk and Caldbeck/S being re-allocated license wise to STV?

yeah I'd be willing to bet on ofcom giving the scottish transmitters of Border over to STV if they allow ITV to go ahead with its plans. There is just no way Scottish viewers should be expected to put up with "Local" news from another country! At least at the moment they opt out on the scottish side.
That or ofcom not allow ITV's plans for Border to go ahead.

Changing the subject slightly .What happend to The following from Border TV.

Susannah Boccaccio,Heather Larcombe,John Harkins,Courtney Macleod and Lee Mackenzie.

ITV has yet to submit the plans! and ofcom still don;t know if these ides vivulate there license agreement

Still problems with Border Scotland, as reported by "Tobias Vaughn" on the STV boards:

"Just back from a couple of days down south. I was watching the ITV Late news yesterday and waited with interest to see what the Border news would be like at the end.

"Unfortunately, the first minute or so was the local news from Granada before it switched very hurriedly to the Border feed. I suspect the bulletin was pre-recorded and intended for the Scottish part of their region only as there were three main stories (mainly from Dumfries and Galloway) and a voiced-over shore report from Cumbria.

"There was also a permanent "Border News" graphic onscreen with a tiny, almost unreadable web address underneath (I think it was www.itvlocal.com).

"All in all, nothing too impressive."

And yet local politcians in the Border TV area want to see it saved:

http://www.bordertelegraph.com/article.php?sec=1&id=15796 ("TV Switch Off")

Were they to go down to Carlisle expecting to see a hive of activity at Harraby and Derek Batey recording another episode of Mr & Mrs for the network, I think they would be in for a big disappointment; the Border TV of today is not the same station of years gone by. All they would be saving is the name, and nothing more.