Peston on Sunday to move to Wednesdays

No, because UTV maybe owned by ITV plc, they still do have regional output, including local political programming after the News at Ten. UTV also still have their own continuity announcers and not the ITV network ones, so they can still be a thorn to ITV as a network.

You forgot about STV, who are 100% not owned by ITV plc, and they are no lovers of the network schedules, and opt out when they can for their own local programming, especially after News at Ten

The regional obligations are down to their franchise agreement with Ofcom, which ITV still complies with. There are similar obligations for ITV Wales.

Fact is UTV is part of the ITV group with playout from Chiswick.

ITV and Peston have sold this very well, but this is a relegation. Sunday morning is king for politics lovers and in theory the Marr audience is there for the picking up at 10am. But most people outside the Westminster bubble, if they ever even watched Marr, probably reckon they've caught up with quite enough politics for one day from that one show.

Peston also never quite got the tone right, at one point chummy with a politician the next trying to be a rottweiler. It was somewhat jarring for me to see him being playful and chirpy with politicians I despise and believe to be extreme, and I suspect it'll have been the same for others with different political persuasions when they saw him doing the same with them. This is an exceptionally serious era of politics and I don't want someone pissing around, I want answers.

Make no mistake, this Wednesday night show is now a box-ticker. Look politicians, we still have a national politics show you can get your faces on and regional ones no-one watches where the B-list can appear and talk nonsense to no-one.

Eh? I said STV were independent in my post. I hadn't forgotten about them at all.

My question mark was bracketing independent STV with ITV plc UTV - which is now not really hugely dissimilar to ITV Wales is it?

Yes - there are licence obligations that ITV plc and STV both have in their individual franchise/licence areas - but that doesn't mean an evening slot is automatically tricky, it just means you have to look at your schedule.

Unless the UTV/ITV Wales once-a-whenever politics shows are on that particular night then I'm sure they'll just run with the network schedule.

STV will probably bump Peston to 11.05pm, after Scotland Tonight. I strongly suspect the new bosses at STV would be delighted to get rid of Scotland Tonight at the earliest possible opportunity, but they've already got a political storm after deciding to shut STV2 and cut a ton of journalist jobs, so they'll probably leave it alone for a while yet.

When does STV franchise come up for renewal? Anyone know, because I am sure ITV plc will want to get that last one, to bring the whole of the ITV regions under ITV plc?

We'll if ITV pressed OFCOM to put STV up for renewal then all of ITV's franchises would go up for renewal too - and you can be certain that ITV have much more to lose than they do to gain.

There is an argument to that having one minor rival in the Channel 3 network is beneficial to them. I think ITV would only opt to buy if STV was going to be sold regardless.

All Channel 3 licences (including STV) were renewed by Ofcom in January 2015 for 10 years.

Thanks for that, it does seems odd that STV are the last truly independent franchise on the ITV network. I still can't believe UTV is gone. Their UTV Ireland caused their decent, and they brought it on themselves.

What makes STV more independent than ITV?

It isn't owned by ITV plc....... (yet)

Then why move it from a slot where its relatively low ratings are par for the course to a slot where its ratings will be under far more scrutiny? The only conclusions I can draw from that move are that they really think it's a go-er or they're looking to kill it off. If it were a "box ticker" they wanted to maintain despite low ratings, it's hard to think of a better slot than Sunday morning.