Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I believe Grampian did hour long North tonight on Friday, and TSW did the same which had some light aspect in it. STV stuck fast to 25mins, 20mins Sport and 15min Music on Friday.

LWT Six oclock show only happened because LWT never wanted to spend money on News programme, until 1988 it was thames got paid to do Friday news with CA doing reading bulletins. I believe before 1981 there was no news on lwt!

The only reason they had to start a News service was because the IBA told them to do so. I can't remember where I read it, but LWT put in their 1991 franchise bid that they were willing to do a 7 day service with whoever won the weekday licence, luckily for them Carlton won, not Thames. Basically at the time there was next to News bulletins on ITV at the weekend, so they didn't see much point of having their own news service, which makes sense really.

And when the CA read the bulletins they were usually faxes from LBC.

Bloody hell.

From a TV geek's perspective, that was heaven. (And from a schoolkid or someone coming home from work on a Friday night, I can imagine seeing the LWT switchover would have been a very welcome sign)

But bloody hell, talk about confused branding. Thames, now LWT, but wait, now Thames news, now LWT, now a programme from Yorkshire, now ...

Fine in the days when you only had four channels, but now?

Yes, they put in their bid to share news and playout with the weekday licensee mainly to cut costs and the result was LNN. I'm sure in the circumstances Thames would done the same.


LWT gained a news service - LWT News in the late 80's. The later editions of the 6 o'Clock Show had news from LWT News and not Thames. The first incarnation of LWT News weren't made in house, they subcontracted another company to do it.

I used to love The 6 o'Clock Show as a kid, it did mark the beginning of the weekend. Even now the theme music brings back memories of fish fingers and oven chips!

It was quite an influential programme, a bit of a trailblazer of populist journalism and started the careers of Greg Dyke, Danny Baker, Janet Street Porter and Paul Ross amongst others. It's not actually far removed from The One Show, as Danny has been known to point out.

I don't t remember them doing headlines at 5:15, I suspect that's something that didn't last long (this being the first year of the 5:15 start)

Don't forget sam fox!

What about Sam Fox?

She was a presenter on it for a few years.

Not where she got her big break though of course

Tyne Tees also ran an hour-long Northern Life on Mondays and Fridays for a long time. The Friday episode often didn't have a huge amount of actual news in it -- most often a long sport section, quite a lot of magazine stuff, outside broadcasts and live music sessions towards the end

I would love to know how Westcountry managed to fill an hours of news a day from 1993- 1999!

They didn't seem to struggle, they just did a lot of news. Remember that they had some about 8 offices around the region, and North/South/East/West opt-outs to the main programme. Therefore the programme was far more localised than most regional news and therefore had more stuff to fill the programme