Scottish pres discussion Thread

ITV News began at 6.55. All following programmes now running 20 minutes late.

What reason did they give for the programmes now running late? Did they mention the football?

On ITV1 (UK) they never mentioned the football causing the disruption to the schedule on the announcement after Beat The star. They only said the time change.

as opposed to ITV1 (US)?

In my view though, 'the old ITV' started going down hill when it was decided that all non-network programming had to fit into a small number of available 'regional timeslots' and had to be of the 'distinctive regional programming' bracket - which for most regions often meant some duller than ditchwater rural documentary. This type of programming was cheap to produce, and it's relative unpopularity made it easy to ditch - and easy to forget that a regional ITV station used to mean more than a national channel with a small number of fixed opt out slots.

Then you ended up in the situation where different announcers in different regions spent 99% of their time introducing the same episodes of the same programmes in the same time slots. As much as I champion the way ITV used to be, even I can see why regional branding was seen as an unnecessary redundancy (although I would disagree with that viewpoint) when there was such parity between different regions.

What STV have done is a reminder of what ITV elsewhere in the country has lost - they saw a series which they thought would be popular, bought the rights to it, and are transmitting it, without needing the permission of ITV towers in London, and without giving two sh*ts about what ITV Network Centre wants transmitted in the timeslot. In other words, they are acting like a complete broadcasting operation in their own right, not just another English-style ITV region which happens to brand itself under a different name.

And if they retain the ability to do this over a simple US import, they also retain the ability to diversify and serve their patch over more significant things, on their terms, in their timeslots and as and when they see fit.

THIS is what was lost when most of ITV was allowed to be merged into 'ITV1' - not just a few half hour films of old men walking around the countryside.

And yes, I am aware that STV itself is Scottish and Grampian merged together under a single brand name, but Scottish viewers are lucky to only have two regions presented as 1 (and still with proper news provision for each region), rather than ten (with a news service cut back to shreds a couple of months ago).

Well... an uncontroversial start to South Park for STV. This'll wake up the older viewers who'd just tuned in for the STV News.

Btw - I thought STV had to pay for all network programming, whether they showed them or not. Has that changed?

Btw2 - Em....? I thought this programme had been bought for a specific demographic - there were no adverts in that break there.

Nice to see South Park with no DOGS on screen.

But odd to see them play out the end titles with a Comedy Central ECP, complete with their logo and web address.

why?

It is Comedy Central programme both in the US and here in the UK

I think you're confusing an ECP with an endcap. From Gavin's description I take it a 'next on Comedy Central' type promo was aired during the credits? Very strange if so.

oops so I did - blushes from me!!!!!!!

Indeed - it wasn't an end cap - it was the end credit promotion on a split screen - the only thing missing was the text indicating "Next.." - but there was a space for it to be overlayed.

Presumably they are packaged like that for broadcast on Comedy Central (previously Paramount).

STV must have been aware of it, as they didn't run their own ECP