ITV buys Culverhouse Cross from UBM

Lots of Cbeebies programmes are done there, there's also quite a large training department there.

EE and Holby have expanded their areas at Elstree over the years and take up a lot of the site. There is at least one studio which isn't in regular use though as well as the old Newsroom South East studio which is still vacant, but was just converted office space

I can only remember a single network production from Westcountry, that being 'The Lads' back in 1996 (an ultra-rare 'Westcountry Production for ITV' endcap exists if you look hard enough for it). Any future development of network production at Westcountry was quickly put paid to when Carlton bought them the following year.

They are housed in a small industrial unit which is so far on the outskirts of Plymouth, that it's technically not in Plymouth at all - Westcountry's building is not within the Unitary Authority of The City of Plymouth, but is on the patch of South Hams District Council!

As limited as their facilities are and always have been, they are probably now vastly underoccupying their building compared to what they were doing in 1993 - although not a priority on the scale as the older stations with huge city centre buildings were, I still wouldn't put it out of all possibility that Westcountry too might end up relocating to an even smaller industrial unit within the next few years.

or even better ... moving into a smaller industrial unit with htv west in either plymouth or bristol perhaps?

Well ITV plc apparently now consider 'ITV West' and 'ITV Westcountry' to be linked, but 'ITV Wales' to be separate. Of course, OFCOM have not changed the franchise map, and HTV Group continue to hold the Wales and West of England franchise, whilst Westcountry Television continue to hold the South West England franchise - this 'restructuring' has no actual change on the boundaries of the ITV regions.

Perhaps OFCOM's next move will be to bow to ITV plc's apparent assertion that it has the right to redraw the franchise map (which, to listen to their press releases, you'd genuinely believe that it is something which they control) and officially make this change in order that such a merged unit could happen.

And if that happens, if he's still above the ground, Peter Cadbury will be snarling 'I told you so...'. He always thought the west of England should be Westward's territory and caused a lot of bad blood with the IBA and HTV in the process.

Indeed. And I have to say that I was always one of his strongest supporters in that view.

I seem to remember making myself extremely unpopular (okay, so what's new, I hear you ask?) at numerous IBA public meetings by strongly arguing for splitting "west" from Wales and merging it with "south-west", instead.

After putting the point forward at about my fifth public meeting, I understand one senior IBA official was heard to say, under his breath, "Oh no, not that franchise rearrangement groupy, again!".