All remaining regional brands removed?
They've kept Meridian, Central, Granada etc etc they could just as easy have been South, Midlands, North West. Meridian in particular is a product from a bygone era. Which would have been the same thing as scrapping Calendar and keeping Yorkshire.
Tyne Tees has actually come back replacing North East. They've kept Lookaround.
I agree. Only real casualties are London & West. West has ended up with a ridiculous name in West Country (East)!
To be honest I think all the old ITV Regional names should have been scrapped (with special half-hour tribute shows in each Region before the rebranding). Out with the old, in with the new...I feel the new ITV Regions should be something like this...
ITV London
ITV South East (with sub-region of old ITV Thames Valley area, made in the South East studios.)
ITV Channel Islands
ITV South West (with sub-region of old ITV West area, made in the South West studios.)
ITV Midlands West
ITV Midlands East (as an a Government Region, surely the East Midlands deserves it's own service?)
ITV Wales
ITV Eastern England
ITV North West
ITV Yorkshire & Lincolnshire
ITV North East and Border (with Scottish viewers now receiving STV)
Government Regions are not culturally significant. Also, removing established names like Granada and even Meridian (it's been around for 20 years now) offers no real benefit; particularly as the BBC regional news programmes in most corresponding regions reference these compass points. Thus, in most regions, the old station/programme name allows the ITV service to be distinctive from the BBC service. And ITVplc just handing Selkirk over to STV? Never going to happen.
I do find the inconsistence of the naming convention bonkers though. Most regions go "ITV News [insert region]" and that's how the presenters refer to it on screen. So, the news in the Meridian Region is called "ITV News Meridian" and the newsreaders call it so. Yet, for the Yorkshire Region, it's called "ITV News Calendar" but from the Daybreak opt out I've seen on the internet, the newsreaders just call it "Calendar", as they always have done. For Granada, it's a mouthful onscreen "ITV News Granada Reports", yet, although I haven't seen the news today, I assume they're just calling it "Granada Reports". Then we have "ITV News Cymru Wales". Why? It's not a billingual programme. Totally unnecessary. And lastly, we have "ITV News Channel TV". It's totally weird, as it's the sort of thing I'd expect if Channel TV were still independent but largely taking the network branding but that's no longer the case. Surely "ITV News Channel Report", along the Granada Reports/Calendar route would've been more appropriate, if not go for the more dull "ITV News Channel Islands" option. Really, there's three different variations from the supposed standard format and this lack of consistency makes me wonder why they bothered renaming the likes or London Tonight or Meridian Tonight - unless it's super lazyness so that they don't need to name the bulletins differently, depending on what time of day it is, i.e. London Today/Tonight, Meridian News/Tonight etc.
And as a footnote, yes, the "east/west" subregions for West Country are wack. Surely, if there's to be no separate regional name, then "north/south" would be more appropriate. I also like "Westcountry" as one word. It just looks better.
