Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

[quote="Steve Williams" pid="863749"]
Never mind London, what about Tyne Tees and their Quayside soap in 97. Now that was amazing, granted it was for Yorkshire as well, but still. Scary to think how much things have changed (and how long ago that was )

That's grim. Wasn't there an HTV West announcer who did something similar around that time? I think it was a woman. Don't think she killed herself in the same way, but I seem to recall that she was working right up to the end. Unless my memory's playing tricks on me here.

Yes, the lovely Annie St John. She took a lethal overdose of champagne and tablets. Bosses found her semi-conscious the following morning when she failed to turn up for work. She died in hospital a few weeks later. She was only 33.

There was just a few months between them IIRC - Pat in February, and Annie in August. A spooky co-incidence was that they'd both announced for Tyne Tees during their careers!

can anyone remember when Coast to Coast late was done?

It turns out it was from Monday 20 - Friday 24 November 1989. Also About Anglia. was replaced on On 9 July 1990 with the new duel Anglia News.

Westcountry introduced a new hour-long weekly programme in 2002 called Westcountry Sunday Edition which ran on sunday afternoons for about 6 months. It was a fairly run of the mill news-come-politics-come-'issues that are apparently important to the region' type programme, and probably their last big effort before regional programming got watered down.

One thing that was intriguing though is that it didn't fit in at all with the rest of their output ('Westcountry' was even mis-spelt 'West Country' on the title sequence, which was a mistake usually only made in listings guides), and the set looked way too different to be a simple redress of the usual news set.

I have always had a suspicion that this programme was actually made outside the region by Central and wasn't made at Langage or comissioned from a local producer; the set looked very similar to Central East's at the time and the whole feel of the programme screamed of Central News to me. Anyone know if this is true?

He was Senior Announcer at the time and had cut down the amount of time he was on air.

Unusually he did a few late shifts in a row just before his death - he was on duty on the Saturday and Sunday late shifts supervising a new announcer, off on the Monday, on the late shift on his own on the Tuesday, and died on the Wednesday in the afternoon.

His death was first announced on the late Border News on Wednesday 28th February 1990.

I remember watching the bulletin which announced Pat's death. My reaction was one of shock as he'd been on duty the night before - if my memory serves me correctly, that bulletin was read by Sue Radford who had not long joined Border. I wonder if (as was the case with Annie St John a few months later) he was due to do a shift that day and failed to turn up. It wasn't until the inquest in June that year that the fuller picture emerged regarding his cash-flow problems and the circumstances in which he died.

I didn't know that Pat was the Senior Announcer at the time of his death, though. That position was of course held by Allan Cartner for many years, with Clive Champney as his deputy. Both left Border in 1988, Allan went to Tyne Tees where he stayed until 1996, while Clive retired. Derek Batey (RIP) also retired from Border at the same time.

Annie died in December 1990 - but yes, still only a few months between them.

Gosh, that's much later than I thought - for some reason I always thought that she died that summer.

It was Andrew Burns who read that bulletin. Pat was off on the Wednesday and due to be in on the Thursday.

Pat had been the Senior Announcer since Alan and Clive left. Clive was at the last Border reunion party and looked amazing, and was in great form - a true gent.