Joint ITV Regional programmes..

Now we're all aware of the decline of Regional programming on ITV, and in the past few years both Scottish and Grampian tend to have a habit of using the same Regional programmes AIUI. Now it has been common in Granada Regions to have the same titled show, but different for each region, such as Crimefighters for instance.

Now this I'm okay with, but I couldn't help but notice tonight that Twisted Tales was being shown on Granada, Yorkshire and Tyne Tees, though it was consistently mentioning places in both the North West and Yorkshire. And there was also The Way We Were , again another ITV Region format, but this was a co-production between (use of old names here) LWT and Anglia.

I don't mind the same format programme, but it's a sad sign of the times that we don't get programmes to cater to our own Region's taste anymore, we're getting used to Pan-Regional programmes, and I don't think I'd be the only one who wouldn't been keen watching a Granada Regional programme made by Yorkshire, and I'd be certain the same goes the other way round.

I'm sure out of ITV's £200 Million odd profit, it surely can't be difficult to produce an hour and a half of non-Regional News programmes per week, it would be easier Networking them, as that is what it feels like at the best of times.

Any other examples? I'm taking a wild guess that HTV West and Westcountry could be doing the same, AIUI ITV see HTV West and Westcountry as one area, rather than the Wales and the West and the Westcountry.

West and Westcountry show the same regional programme on Sunday's at 6pm too - "How the West was made".

I think West and Westcountry have had a few joint regional programmes for some time

Meridian has done joint programmes with LWT, Anglia and HTV for a long, long time so it is not that new. I think it started when United News and Media took over Meridian/Anglia/HTV.

ITV announced in some grandiose press release a while back, that they are 'integrating' HTV West and Westcountry together, splitting west from Wales.

Although West does more logically fit with south west than with Wales, this is completely at odds with the franchises held for the areas concerned, with OFCOM licencing what continues to be the Wales&West region to HTV Group, and the South West England region to Westcountry Television. However, no one, not even the regulator body which awards the franchises, seems to care about this.

I think the ultimate end will be the total death of HTV West as a tangibly separate entity, and an englarged Westcountry operating over the entire area. I wouldn't even bank on an entirely split news service surviving, 1950's levels of regionalism where people in Penzance, Minehead, and Littlesea all see the same regional news may well return. However, whilst all this might happen in practice, I've no doubt that OFCOM will continue to happily licence a dual Wales&West region to one company and a South West England region to another.

Out of interest, Chris, what is your personal opinion, as someone from down at the pointy end, on your region no longer finishing somewhere around Taunton, but going right the way up to Gloucester?

I expect you already know my views on the subject, but I'm interested in the view from your end of the new region, which could well be different from that in the bit that was traditionally overpowered by those other Celts, from Cardiff.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that this is happening really.

Tyne Tees viewers are long accustomed to this tactic, with pan-regional programmes administered from Yorkshire being broadcast in the North East for the last 13 years. It is very irritating, but in all honesty I gave up caring a long time ago. YTV makes a programme, puts in a two-minute piece based in the "Tyne Tees area" (usually North Yorkshire) and there you go, a pan-regional programme.

One of Granada's earliest co-produced regional programmes was a 10 minute show (going back about 13 years here now) shown at 1040pm on Mondays and it was a review of the weekly business news (a kind of business version of What The Papers Say) and it was shown in Granadaland and on Meridian TV.

The local programmes broadcast by Scottish/Grampian were word for word, inflection for inflection exactly the same, as opposed to individual regional packaging.

This is because OFCOM moved the goalposts as per regards local broadcasting in Scotland; they insist that programmes be produced by either region be broadcast in both regions (despite manifold complaints
from viewers in each respective area about output irrelevant to their particular district). This in spite of the fact that prior to this decision, they upheld earlier complaints, and duly rapped SMG on the knuckles.

SMG are not part of ITV PLC, therefore the profit figures are irrelevant in this context, but if such underhand means are good enough for SMG, why should'nt they be good enough for ITV PLC?

In terms of output? To be honest, I don't really have one. I pretty much gave up on non-news regional programming several years ago when Westcountry lost the ability to commission and support their own programmes - it was all moved to Central (incidentally, I always had a sneaking suspicision that the short-lived Westcountry Sunday Edition was actually made in Nottingham, the set look awfully like a redress of the Central News East set). The last decent thing Westcountry made was the excellent '40 years of ITV' series from 2001 (funny, I could've sworn they celebrated 50 years of ITV in 2005...)

This then created the ridiculous situation where someone in Birmingham decided what is appropriate local output for a station based in Plymouth and designed to serve Devon, Cornwall, and parts of Somerset and Dorset (aswell as introducing that horrible new look to the news),

Predictably, local output then quickly became full to the brim with drab rural-ly stuff interspersed with various programmes featuring footage of p*ssed people on the streets of Plymouth in the name of 'human interest documentaries'.

Sharing programmes with HTV West resulting in a huge transmission area of 'regional' programmes make no difference to me - it's irrelevant that the regional programming is largely irrelevant, because moving control to Central meant that it was irrelevant even before they started sharing on a big scale.

Removing the link between HTV West and Westcountry wouldn't make any difference to me unless it also meant that local comissioning returned, which it won't. But even if it did, the station would still have no control over the schedule, and be forced to show their output at whatever graveyard slot ITV Towers have graciously bestowed upon them, regardless of where the programme actually should be shown.

What's the situation up west then Nick?