ITV Night Watch

what the hell is this programme?

apparently some of the links were prerecorded in the central east studio in birmingham.

the programme i have seen over the past two nights has focused on police forces in the central and westcountry areas. are there different versions around the country? are the links coming from the same studio?

if so, why schedule a quasi-regional programme lasting over an hour and a half at 2am? is it something to do with making up the quota of regional programmes?

It does seem to be bits from news programmes and regional programmes put into one larger programme.

Though I do think that they've done a good job with the lighting and look for the links, its just a shame that Central can't sort out the lighting for their main news programme.

It's good to see that they are commissioning night time programmes rather than 'just sticking a film on and starting Nightscreen at 3am' that many people said when the news of ITV Play ending came to light

It's absurd, though, that CNE had to be evicted from its studio for the sake of this programme.

It is strange. I presume that this has been produced by Central, though with Steve Scott doing the links, you'd have thought that they could have somehow used a simple CSO background that he could have recorded anywhere.

so is everyone seeing exactly the same version? or everyone seeing links recorded by steve in birmingham along side macro-regional level inserts?

I got Steve last night. Also, whatever film was on last night before Nightwatch, it was nice to see the full credits being played. Something of a rarity these days.

I don't think it is regional TVM. When I first heard about this programme I thought it would be (some) live links with some pre-recorded Crimefighters-style stuff but it seems to be more the latter with Steve Scott doing links from the Central East studio.

If the links are recorded I'm not sure why a studio was required at all in this day an age surely a few outside jobbys would have done the trick, or using the Central newsroom or something.

When it was billed, I actually thought that they would be live through the night with the police force (a bit like the Street Crime Live thing that they did on five).

I thought that too. It appears some regions (STV, UTV, Wales, even London one night) are not showing the full length of the programme on some nights, joining it half way through.

if that is the case - showing what is essentially a central/westcountry regional programme on the network late at night seems strange! are there still quotas requiring network to show a certain number of hours from outside london? (although with ytv and granada still active, you'd think that target would be pretty easy to reach)

i guess its only as strange as when they showed a channel tv regional programme one night about the flower festival in jersey a few years ago!

'Nightwatch' is two programmes billed on EPGs and TV Guides as one hence some regions may not be taking the first programme.

It is an 'ITV Broadcast' production whoever they are!