STV News

Not at all Gary and yes you are correct they could have gone with a national programme (and wont rule out they wont yet) but lets look at the hard facts....where do stv spend the money in developing their service....quite clearly in the central belt. The Inverness opt out was in their promise of performance years agao....where is it?? Why no HD upgrade in the Aberdeen / Dundee studios (even on freeview)??? Time to invest some of its profits it its Northern half of its operation.

100% with everything you say stv today. The "localness" has gone because all of the local staff have gone!

I know where you are coming from. There are still some of the old guard in editorial from what I can see yet I guess it depends on what brief they have from the main base which is not Aberdeen now.
As I say, North Tonight is not coming back so I think the hope to have a beefed up local service is the best we can hope for. It may be that the local news site is the future - we all know that news is changing in how it is consumed in this internet age.

I still wonder if the plan for STV in the end is one National bulletin on Channel 3 (ITV Network), with the STV local stations having shorter, more localised bulletins in Edinburgh, Glasgow and eventually (as apparently planned by STV themselves) Aberdeen and Dundee? After all there is a little bit of extra funding that goes with the 'local' stations...though surely there would be less viewers watching?

I do agree STV news outdo all the most of the other ITV regional news. I dont know I understand where your coming from with North Tonight, it used to be hour long on Mondays and Fridays. Saying that, I believe the main reason North Tonight is counted at a higher standard compared to Scotland today is mainly down to the fact north tonight had alot more features and mini hard hitting reporting., crammed in. While in Scottish, there had a number of different shows including its hard hitting elements in sperate shows, else where in the schedules.

Scotland Today is still highly regard by many. Overall both provide an top class service.

I think the only way STV news will ever slove the current problem would be for a hour long Scottish Six, Ie taking over ITN content then you can have 3 sperate presenters for local feeds 15mins, plus sport etc.

This should definitely be looked at as the Channel 3 network is essentially dead, with both STV and UTV now being affiliates of ITV. With a Scotland only bulletin Border Scotland could also join the rest of the programme, though ITV could continue to provide the more localised feed. I guess the sub-Regions would be within a 'National' programme as opposed to 2 separate programmes (not sure how a Border opt-out would cope with this as it would need to be on at the same time as the English side, unless the Border show was always the recorded show from Gateshead). With UTV to become a station for all of Ireland, this sort of set up could also work for them.

There could also be benefits for the ITV plc stations as ITV might not feel the need to produce a 30 minute Regional programme at 6pm...a 20 minute sub-Regional bulletin could work well. The only stumbling blocks to this arrangement could be the Wales, Channel Islands, Border, London and Granada Regions which currently require 30 minutes according to Ofcom's regulation...I'm sure they could come to some arrangement though. A weekly 30 minutes Political/Current Affairs show for the English Regions would be a good start.

That said though, even though STV have the Channel 3 licence, ITV no longer have shares within the company. So STV could in effect tell ITV to swing from the nearest lamppost if they felt like it.

Just to back to my posts though, I never said that the North bulletin was inferior to that of the Central bulletin, In fact I lived in the Grampian TV region for 15 years and always thought highly of it. But my issue with the Grampian region is that, where I lived, it was right on the border between Grampian and Scottish, and Crieff is closer to Stirling than it is Dundee. So stories covering Aberdeen and Dundee didn't really have substance but yet stories from the Central belt did...

And for the Scottish Six...Didn't the Tories effectively put that to bed a couple of years ago?

So many changes over the years have taught me anything is possible. Even when things are put to bed they can wake up.

At the point where the outsourcing of ITV local news was being advertised by Labour STV mis-read the political feeling and proposed an hour-long Scottish Six. Hugely ambitious, and it would have dealt with some of the problems with network news in the country as it stands (sometimes it feels like watching a foreign news show), but it raised questions over coverage of the former Grampian region, not to mention that the political feeling among those who are pro-Union is very much against giving Scotland its own national news show for fairly obvious reasons.

There's more on it here: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/stv-plans-to-resurrect-idea-of-scottish-six-news-bulletin-1.920636

In the end the contract went to a group of newspaper consortiums simply because it was more local, and that was the mood-music of the whole process. It never made it to air as they weren't ready to go, and Labour was defeated at the election. Probably just as well really.

It seems fairly obvious that, should this be considered again, that Border wouldn't join in. Their strategy is clearly local, taking Representing Border and Border Life rather than Scotland Tonight, aside from the fact they would want to hold on to ITV branding throughout and wouldn't want to pay any more than they have to.

I think STV News does an excellent job with a millionth of the resources of the often complacent BBC, and Scotland Tonight is something to be very proud of. It has actually killed off Newsnight Scotland and redefined how current affairs programming works in this country. I have heard complaints with regard to the north, I can only speak of the west and sometimes east. I do note, however, that the split region situation doesn't work as well up north. People in Aberdeen have a lot in common with people in Dundee and less with Shetland, aside from the oil, and yet in the granite city you get a lot of reports about places hours and hours away.

As for that internet link earlier - more rose-tinted spectacles rubbish. Some people need to realise that local ITV produced some utter garbage among the gold decades ago, the difference being that you only had three channels to choose from so you were stuck with it. I'm quite sure people in many regions of England look at Scottish news coverage with envy.

I think it's safe to say that STV News is definitely going to be broadcast in HD. John MacKay just posted this picture on Twitter. 25 new HD cameras.

https://twitter.com/RealMacKaySTV/status/454271268326739968/photo/1

And a new set as well...

where does it say that?