ITV1 to be rebranded as ITV

Then again moving that 10mins does not help STV nor UTV, and also cutting the lunchtime news is not going to help either. Of course how does that work if Main and local news cover the current slot 1.28 - 2.01 with adverts?

I don't really see what it will achieve by moving the regional news 'inside' the national news and cutting it back. To me, its just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. It won't steal any viewers from BBC News because the chances are, if you watch ITV regional news then you'll watch the national one so this would just change the structure. Likewise for the BBC.

I obviously can't speak for any other regions but here in the North West, Granada Reports works perfectly well. It has a good 10-15 minutes of news, a good sports roundup, a lifestyle story and an entertainment or 'local' feature, and is a well rounded and balanced magazine programme. They're also exceptional at covering big news stories and dedicating entire bulletins to them.

I just feel that such a move would cheapen regional news even more and make it feel less important. It is already becoming a bit of a vicious circle because they say the demand isn't there and reduce the budget, and then they no doubt lose viewers (which is probably what they want). If they put better funding into it and if the overall look of it wasn't so awful and dated, it would give it the chance of performing better.

I expect those are the sorts of debates they've been having within ITV, hence why these stories about changing the regional news timings have been mentioned occasionally for years but never actually come to anything.

Every reduction in the PSB commitment has been at the agreement of the regulator. Far from seeing how Ofcom can allow them to continue, they've been complicit !

And you fall into the same old trap that PSB = regional news. It isn't the sole requirement. ITV's PSB requirements also extend to the amount of originally sourced content.

Yeah, and also children's and religion, although those have been all but eliminated now.

If ITV move back to 17 programmes it could be a very good move. From my personal view (in Tyne Tees) we would go idependent of border, and start running separate North & South North East Tonight. So a twenty minute bulletin of Tyne Tees North news would be more than we get now. Do 17 regions broadcast separate other bulletins as well?

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It's been apparent for many years that ITV plc would dearly love it if they could drop regional news altogether at some point in the future. Blurring the distinction between the regional and national news as much as possible (thus making the regional news much less "appointment-to-view" friendly in its own right) is a good way of easing the journey towards such an ultimate goal.

After all, if the regional insert were, say, at 6:10pm-6:30pm or something, and listings/EPGs etc listed the 6pm-7pm slot as a single programme, then for any given viewer to specifically desire to watch the ITV regional news without also watching some/all the ITV national news, becomes less possible. Also, it could be that *in practice* the regional insert rarely airs on time, but rather moves around a bit daily (e.g. on a given day, it might actually air from, say, 18:08:45 until 18:28:45 or something).

If the very existence of the regional programmes become increasingly "invisible" to casual viewers, then that paves the way for them to be dropped with most people barely even noticing that the axe has fallen, thus avoiding many complaints about it. I can well believe that this is the path that we may now be on.

Rather than letting ITV cut 10 minutes from regional news I'd rather OFCOM just allowed them to have an extra ad break. Maybe that's the way to coax ITV into keeping up their regional commitments - allow an ad break within the regional content that doesn't count towards the days content. I do believe though ITV's plan is to keep the 30 minute slot, but 10 minutes of it won't technically be regional news.

That's how I understand it too.

I think Ofcom should state ITV must reinstate all the previous sub-regions for News a.s.a.p (for all bulletins). I think in return Ofcom should then agree to make some amendments to the Contract Rights Renewal agreement and help all PSB channels by creating new agreements for programmes (made by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 or even the fledging Local TV stations) that are retransmissed (by channels/platforms such as BSkyB). This could help ITV pay for the expensive sub-Regional News programming, as well as provide at least 1/2 hours Non-News Pan-Regional programming. Other PSB programming too (via ITV(1) or any of it's other channels)!

* I'd actually forgot about the 'Retransmission idea, it's not the worst idea in my opinion and would hopefully help all our PSB's.

No more ad breaks for me, I don't wish to see British TV become even more like the U.S. It would help cheapen the Regional News even more in my opinion.

Also, why is there sometimes a break between the regional news and the national? But most days there isn't. Is it depending on the region or if it happens it happens national?