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ITV Regional News to change

ITV regional news in England will shrink from 16 programmes down to 8 under Michael Grade's proposals

ITV regional news in England will shrink from 16 programmes dow
published on UK Free TV

ITV Boss Michael Grade is looking to make savings at ITV-1 and has said this week that the "current investment [is] unsustainable" for the regional news programmes.

Currently ITV broadcasts 17 different regional news programmes over the 10 "licence regions" and had plans to provide more. Taking the figures from Ofcom: New News, Future News and our own figures for the population of the regions, Mr Grade's statement that there is no link between the region's population and the viewing figures seems to hold water.

ITV Region Name

Population

Viewing

Pop Share

Anglia East

1721831

25%

3.03%

Anglia West

2410770

25%

4.24%

Border England

489545

25%

0.86%

Border Scotland

102552

25%

0.18%

Meridian Maidstone

1960045

24%

3.45%

Meridian Southampton

2415104

24%

4.25%

Thames Valley

2151109

22%

3.78%

Granada

6505486

21%

11.44%

Central East

1367097

20%

2.40%

Central West

6664486

20%

11.72%

YTV Lincolnshire

1563670

20%

2.75%

YTV South Yorkshire

306530

20%

0.54%

YTV Yorkshire

3931187

20%

6.92%

TTTV Tees

1140441

17%

2.01%

TTTV Tyne

1911103

17%

3.36%

HTV Wales

2562869

15%

4.51%

West Country

1540454

15%

2.71%

HTV West

2142408

13%

3.77%

London

10495204

12%

18.46%





The proposal is to reduce the number of regional news programmes down to 9 over the 10 "licence areas". This means that the four regions that cover more than half of the population already will remain:

London, Central (West/East), Granada, YTV (Yorkshire/Lincolnshire/South Yorkshire), HTV Wales

The smallest programmes will presumably be merged, perhaps like this:

A "super north" region of TTTV Tyne, TTTV Tees and Border England;
A "super Anglia" region of Anglia East and Anglia West
A "super south" region of Meridian Southampton, Meridian Maidstone and Thames Valley
A "super west" region of HTV West and West Country

"Border Scotland" to take STV service

See also: Regional News and ITV1 fears.

What do you think of the proposals?

For information, the other ITV regions:

ITV Region Name

Population

Viewing

Pop Share

STV

3246515

23%

5.71%

Grampian

837994

23%

1.47%

 

 

 

 

UTV

1223710

37%

2.15%

Channel

160000

 

0.28%



Update: 0935, 14-Sep-07, the National Union of Journalists is launching a campaign to save local and regional news on ITV after the company revealed plans to drastically reduce its regional news output.

Map of new configuration:



View the data in a spreadsheet

No amount of resources will make the regional news any more local, just LESS local. Grade should have had the courage to just close down the whole damn operation, not provide "regional news" for upwards of 4 million people.

The thing is .. why not just outsource the whole half hour to a regional newspaper operation and let them provide the whole service and let them take any ad revenue?

If they did this on a transmitter-by-transmitter basis, this would provide a much more local service and stop the regional and local press going to the wall.

Only by shutting down the current operation and tendering it out can the cost basis be changed...

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