Westcountry TV to close

If you go back far enough in time, ITV had huge variations in scheduling between companies, even in peak time. Yes, for the ITN news and certain programmes like Coronation Street, the network acted as one. But local companies would often show totally different programmes during the evening. For instance, at, say, 8p.m., Border could be screening an episode of The Saint, while Granada viewers got Man in a Suitcase and STV The Fugitive. Local children's programming was common. Border, for a time, had its own version of Romper Room, for instance, and had local inter-school quizzes etc. And, at 8.30 on Friday night until well into the 70s, Border had its own local version of Mr and Mrs as well as other local output like Brain of the Borders, Happy Families (like Mr and Mrs but with parents and kids), local music shows, documentaries, chat shows etc. And that from one of the smallest companies on the ITV network! It is disgraceful that OFCOM has sealed the fate of "local" commercial television. Yes, Border, and I'm sure others, could be seen as parochial, even amateur at times when compared with big budget programming from ATV or Granada. And, writing from the Scottish side of the Border, they infuriatingly largely ignored requests for access to wider-interest Scottish programming. But, from Grampian in the north, to Channel in the south, the local ITV companies, particularly the smaller ones, were totally committed to their regions. That has withered over the years. Now OFCOM is holding the watering can while ITV stirs in the fatal dose of weedkiller.

ATV? They became Central in 1982. Keep up, matey!

That aside, I still don't get how bad Ofcom are, they are even worse than the ITC. It doesn't take much, just hand "Border North" over to STV.
If you REALLY want the mega-regions, might I suggest Border South and TTTV merging, but give Granada or Ulster the IOM area. Also, merge the Westcountry and HTV zones.

BTW, I don't support the mega-regions, and the cutbacks, these are just ideas.

RJG was referring to the 1970s though -- when ATV was still in full swing and, indeed, every ITV station was totally different.

Your ideas are a watered down version of what ITV are doing anyway. I utterly disagree with Westcountry/HTV merging, or Border/TTTV. In both cases, at least one of the two companies covered very well defined regions. These should have been left as they were.

One thing to remember, though, is that it's all too easy to think that the regions as they are are perfect, and should not be changed in size. Surely news about Bristol to the people of Truro is no different to news about Manchester for the people of Blackpool? Unless the regions were scaled back to be ultra-local, there's always going to be a large amount of irrelevence to those who don't live in the big cities.

A better option, I think, would be to allow the new "super-regions" to be created, but at the same time the requirement for regional programming should be upped considerably. The savings made in closing down some of the regional bases would more than allow this to be done whilst still saving money.

It is fair comment, but when you take things to extremes you have folk in Stranraer hearing about news stories in Selby, and vice-versa.

The Tyne Tees area wasn't entirely ideal (the original patch was; the addition of a massive North Yorkshire overlap area complicated matters though) but most of it reflected an area with a very strong sense of identity (the traditional counties of Northumberland and Durham, which encompassed Tyne and Wear along with most of Northumberland).

That is now being wrecked under the current proposals.

Going slightly off-topic here - tonight's Paul O'Grady Show: "I love regional telly - I can't cope without Meridian Tonight when I'm at home in Kent, same for Granada Reports when I go up north..."

Of course, the big question is... why is Paul O'Grady singing ITV's praises?

Manchester-Blackpool - 50 miles
Bristol-Truro - 165 miles

Bit of a difference, eh?

On that basis we might as well have a single north of England region.

Those that support a single south west region might like to consider that from here in Gloucester Lands End is about as far as the scottish border. Anyone for a merger of the Anglia region with Tyne Tees?

Rob

No, no, no, no, no. One thing which, frankly, p*sses me off about these consolidations is the assertion that Westcountry and HTV West can viably be merged together - stemming from that wonderful London-centric view that the country ends at Bristol and everything beyond is one generic place called 'The South West' where everything is the same. This new region will be HUGE and cover one of the most culturally diverse parts of the country. It will also create a situation where Plymouth, Exeter and Bristol will all have to compete for coverage in the same news programme, pushing the rest of the region even further down the schedule than it allready is.

And I'm further annoyed at the idea that in merging Westcountry and HTV West together its apparently obvious to decide that Westcountry will close and the old HTV West will be the one which survives to broadcast to the whole lot - again I'm sure an assertion that has been made purely on the basis that HTV is in Bristol and Westcountry is in Plymouth rather than undergoing any actual audit of both station's facilities & previous output and then making an objective decision on which would be most capable of taking on this task.

If they were going to close one of them down, in my mind it should have been the Bristol based operation to go, and Westcountry's Plymouth base that served the lot - simply because they in my mind have always done the better job. I've seen a fair bit of HTV West's news output over the years, and it always seemed to pale in comparison both in terms of journalism and technical production quality to Westcountry's output. Considering that HTV before restructuring had the financial clout of broadcasting to the whole of Wales behind it as well as a fair few network comissions, one has to wonder why the West operation's news service couldn't match up to that provided by Wetscountry.

If we are now effectively going to have HTV West broadcasting down here, to me the much increased transmission area won't be the only thing to detract from the quality of the output.

It surely cannot be a coincidence that the four most 'remote' ITV-owned regions are the ones which are being hit hardest by these plans.

Usual story -- hit the peripherals of a company first in order to save the 'core', however rotten that core may be.

ITV, of course will counter that the merger of HTV and Westcountry will result in no greater loss of service than the merger of Central East and West -- and they may have a point. But that is bad logic -- that is a reason to keep the latter rather than to get rid of the former.

Ultimately of course this is nothing more than moving deckchairs -- we all know that ITV intend to end regional broadcasting altogether by 2012, so perhaps attention should turn to ensuring that the staff affected screw ITV for every penny they can get in redundancy.

I agree with both statements. I don't like the mergers either, I just suggested a better idea than what is planned now. Sorry if I offended you.

BTW, I live nowhere near London.

It's not personal, and I did note that you were anti-the mergers yourself. Peace

If it were me, and I wanted to reduce the amount of cash ITV spent on the regions, I'd have left the areas as they were, and reduced the programme length to fifteen minutes in every region.

Then filled the gap with a number of macro-regional non-news programmes.