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After consultations with Ofcom, viewer groups, MPs and other stakeholders ITV plc has now put forward an alternative structure which while still effectively reducing the number of regions would provide most of them with peak-time sub-regional or local 'opt-outs’ – news summaries targeted at specific areas which are included within regional news programmes.
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Chris Harris on 23 June 2008 at 9:05pm
These sub-regional opt-outs will still provide less coverage by far than is currently provided by the existing licenses. The new maps have also been drawn up solely on the basis of transmitter footprints and therefore, for example, the new opt-out for the far west of the country lumps Plymouth (the main urban centre in Devon) with the whole of Cornwall. Cornwall will inevitably be marginalized as far more newsworthy material is generated in the main population centre. Crews will not be sent to Cornwall to cover a story seen as less important by a news editor based in Bristol (or Whitely). Currently ITV Westcountry targets Cornwall alone within its sub-regional opt whereas Plymouth and the surrounding area has its own opt-out.
The new "News Map" is ridiculous on other levels too. The new Westcountry region, for example, will now stretch from Tewkesbury to the Isles of Scilly. Tewkesbury is closer to the Scottish border than it is to Lands End. Do people in Gloucester really want to see news from St. Ives in their "local" news program? To some in the Midlands Cornwall is seen as a holiday destination and not somewhere which is relevant to their everyday lives.
Some of these opt-outs won't be live either, but pre-recorded (sometimes as much as 2 hours in advance of broadcast) to allow the program to be made in one broadcast centre, from one studio, with one gallery and one set of presenters. There will be no opt-outs at the weekend either, just one generic bulletin for the whole super-region. There is a good chance that, if ITV get this plan in motion, the Westcountry program won't be broadcast from the region it serves either. This may well make economic sense but if you consider that one idea currently being talked about is to broadcast West/Westcountry from the transmission centre at Whitely which is a 4 hour drive from parts of the new region. I feel that is ludicrous.
ITV has a plan to drastically reduce the service it provides to their audience right across the country, and if Ofcom agree to let them put these plans in place I'm certain that the audience will dwindle to nothing. I do not want local news that isn't local.