Westcountry TV to close

Good idea, I mean lets be honest, how many crap & instantly forgettable channels have appeared on Freeview recently for example

So where does all the money for these broadcasting licences go - straight to the Treasury? I highly doubt every last penny actually goes towards the cost of the broadcasts themselves.

Some sort of windfall tax would be best IMO - a small percentage of profits goes towards a PSB fund. Or who knows - perhaps auctioning off the ITV franchises to companies who want to provide regional TV - it would be interesting to see how much that raised.


The most annoying thing about all this is there was no room for compromise - when ITV's intentions were first announced I thought they were probably going for the tactics of proposing huge cuts so that when OFCOM only agreed to axing a couple of regions things would look better. But no, OFCOM ploughed straight in and let ITV do everything they wanted - as per usual.

There are compromises though which serve the viewer so much better - the main changes I'd make would be merging ITV West and Thames Valley rather than axing them both, and splitting Border between STV and Granada rather than merging with Tyne Tees - and possibly, but not crucially, keeping Central East and Central West. That really only results in one or two extra regions than ITV plan - so still makes huge savings, but serves the viewers much better IMO.


Back to OFCOM though - and it all comes back to who is regulating the regulator as they have made some catastrophic failures in the last couple of years.

Fair play when it comes to the standard taste and decency complaints they usually get it right, but with the bigger issues such as the phone in scandals (OFCOM should have stamped it out before it even started), things like the Celebrity BB and non-X Factor scandal (where they added fuel to the fire by unnecessarily giving virtually hourly updates on the number of complaints) and now with ITV, they have completely failed as a regulator.

And that's not even touching on their doomed PSB channel plan - OFCOM obviously can't be trusted with such matters.


Considering things like whether England Test Matches appear on terrestrial TV are decided by the Government through the Culture Secretary, it's ridiculous an issue which really is much bigger can be decided by the group of nobodies running OFCOM.

Agreed.

This was a perfect opportunity for Ofcom to have ITV over a barrel. I am quite sure that STV would have been delighted to have been gifted the Border franchise, even if it meant having to run the full Lookaround programme (even if it was broadcast from a spare studio at STV).

ITV have no interest in keeping up regional commitments in the BTV area -- so why couldn't Ofcom have pointed out that the franchise areas are a privilege and not a right, and transferred control unilaterally to STV? After all, the Scottish part is as entitled to an extended regional service as Grampian or UTV are, and they simply aren't getting it at the moment -- indeed it could be said that come next year the Border Scotland sub-region will be getting the weakest regional service in the whole country, despite being an integral part of Scotland.



Yeah, it's absurd to think that TSW/Thames/TVS would have acted any differently to Tyne Tees/Central/Anglia when push came to shove (crude attempt to come up with equivalent franchises notwithstanding). In 1991, YTV were just as committed to quality as Thames were; it was when the hard commercial realities came into play a few years later that everything crumbled.

If TSW had survived with the bid they submitted, they'd have been forced to merge with a neighbouring franchise as quickly as TTTV succumbed. Perhaps it was the fact that there were no larger, neighbouring areas with any real strength that survived close to TSW that sealed its fate (TVS also overbid and HTV were weakened by their own high bid -- and neither were 'partners' of TSW in other ventures).

Fair enough, I wasn't sure TBH.

There have no spare studioe at Glasgow, even if there did there would still wont the opt out.

I believe the only way STV would do is

A: borders to Scotland today: and have 6-8 min opt out for the area, which may also include MAJOR stories form Carlise.

Cumbria will It may need to be give to some one else.

Well without Scotland Cumbria would fit in better with Tyne Tees, or the other option is as a sub region of Granada, which perhaps could extend a bit further south than previously.

STV wise it would probably make most sense to split the current Central Scotland and Border Scotland regions into two new regions with one based in Edinburgh and one in Glasgow.

Doesn't make much difference anyway, if theres any big story in Cumbria or something newsworthy around the Lake District usually gets onto Granada Reports anyway, and it's usually been the case, like North Wales I suppose.

Yep - there is no reason to believe that Thames, TSW, TVS or TV-am would have been in any different kind of situation. The chances are that they'd have been taken over or merged in exactly the same way...

The 1992 changes were pivotal :

1. Franchises became "highest bidder" not "higest quality" (albeit with a weak "quality threshold", and economic sustainability clause or two)
2. C4 and ITV were split in advertising / funding terms.

Really? Wow. I must admit I haven't kept up with goings-on at STV buildings-wise, but that's amazing. Even Border have a second (and third I believe) studio that could have come out of mothballs if necessary.



One has to wonder what would have happened if Mike Neville had still been broadcasting.

Right up until he left, the man was an institution in the North East, and was held in similar regard in Cumbria. TTTV at that point were one of the few ITV regions that were giving the BBC a sound kicking in the regional ratings, largely due to Mike (I believe that TTTV still runs the BBC close, unusual for ITV).

With Border being equally strong, would ITV have dared to break up such a strong programme under those circumstances?

Actually STV MOVED! last year to its new complex next to BBC at Pacific Quay Cowcaddens is No more, you can wacth the real mckay blog " Cowcaddens comes down " which show you it getting knock down!

TELL I LIE!!!!

There is a second studio in STV building: But is used by satana sport and no one ones! STV does hire out studios in bbc of course that is where there made Postcode challenge.

so an opt out studio would be built somewhere southern Scotland.

Yep - STV relocated to Pacific Quay, as have the BBC. STV provide studio facilities for Setanta Sports (virtual AIUI?) but I don't think they have much spare capacity.

However most current sub-opt studios the BBC have are built in office-grade space and aren't studios (Cambridge's studio is in the old Radio Cambridgeshire radio newsroom, after initially launching from the local radio studio)

STV's studio in Dundee is an office space, taking into account its essentially a background and a plasma screen in that wondrous concrete lump "the nethergate business centre" (a.k.a cheap rent).

I'd expect they'd do something along these lines by putting a corner in any new office they opened in Galashiels if they did get Border Scotland.