26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

I hadn't realised TVS split Hannington for News in the latter part of its tenure.

As you describe it as an opt (which were a bit unusual for ITV) was it an opt-out during Coast to Coast from Southampton ?

From someone in a position to know:

"Yes there was an opt, we did it from Pres B. We did a great DVE move on the GV200 - opt opt opt!! Mai Davies among others was the presenter"

Opting out was not that unusual for ITV in the South in Southern's time. On those days when there was no local edition of "Day by Day' from the Dover studio (called Scene South East) the news for the East area would be pre-recorded a few minutes before going on-air and would be inserted into the "Day by Day" programme (coming from Studio 3 in Southampton) in the Pres suite. Southampton Pres controlled the feed to the Dover transmitter as well at the central southern transmitters at all times. Note - not two Pres suites, the single Marconi Pres desk could handle split Pres feeds to the Dover area as designed.

If you were watching off-air in the southern transmission area you would notice a pregnant pause from the main presenter when introducing the local news before the actual cut to the local news reader - Pres needed a split second to run the ACR25 with the East news and cut to it. There was also a pregnant pause on the return cut as the news' were unlikely to be exactly the same in duration - pretty darned close, but never identical!

Memories of going into Pres B before the bulletin and unbolting the vertical bit of "scenery" from the floor, turning it round to its "news" position, and bolting it back down again. Then the reverse after the bulletin.

Yes, started on Dec 12th 1988, (the day of the Clapham Rail crash, total co-incidence)

It was a five minute opt-out within Coast to Coast (as mentioned thrown to from a DVE image of both presenters)

The 22:30 weekday bulletin was completely separate. Also there was a local arts show that had a separate
'what's on' segment. Probably that was a three way split ? Split ads for Hannington also came in at the same time too, if not a few weeks prior to Dec 12th ?

Edit: Additional. Heathfield also had a similar opt out from Maidstone's Coast to Coast programme. How did that work ?

Reminds me of this quick set change in the Southern days, at 4:30 here:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2e7c2a

I like the bit at 01:10, it's about the most exciting thing that's ever happened in Basingstoke.

Brian and Trevor, both lovely unassuming men. Brian was married to Pat Phillips who used to direct Day by Day quite often.

Brian used to occasionally sign off of his afternoon shift (at the end of the children's TV slot) , to say he was off to catch the train back home to Kingston Upon Thames. I can't remember if he also did announcing for Thames ?

I wonder if that's where TV-am got the idea for their rotating weather cube.

Those kind of things were quite common in TV set design back-in-the-day.

Again slightly off topic but may be of interest: https://www.transdiffusion.org/2017/02/14/how-to-win-an-iba-franchise

I know the images are all artists impressions but I'm presuming the names are genuine. How different things could have panned out. I find alternative history fascinating as a lot of what we have now is dependent on decisions made in the past; if WWN had not gone bump in 1964 would Wales still effectively be split? Probably not, but then the concept of a London split rumbles on on paper if not on screen so...