SMG Official Thread.

SMG Chief Executive Andrew Flanagan has said when the ITV merger was announced earlier this month it was within the interests of all concerned -viewers,advertisers,SMG and ITV partners -subject to certain safeguards being put in place.

But now it has emerged that the proposed safeguards are turning out to be inadequate to guarantee the regional identities of Grampian and Scottish TV and ensure that quality Scottish series such as Taggart and Don't Drop The Coffin can continue to be networked. If these undertakings are not strengthened ,they risk the merger having an unfair impact on Scottish and Grampian TV .

SMG says it wants a guaranteed minimum value of commisions to protect it's position and to ensure the continued broadcasting of high quality Scottish -produced programmes to the UK audience.and above all the regional identities of SMG stations are to be protected .

Interesting, as SMG are taking all the network ITV1 promos (rather than local versioned ones) from 1st January.

They put their whole promotions department minus one on notice a couple of weeks ago

Will they replace the ITV1 logo with their own or will they be ITV1 branded too?

That would be a local versioned trail wouldn't it? I suspect the answer is no.

Presumably the 1 person left will either be making local trails or will be co-ordinating the networked trails

Don't think they've finally decided, the original plan was to take the ITV1 trails, and have the one promo person doing the local stuff, but that will probably change a dozen times between now and then.

They were also debating a name change (again!) to ITV1 Scotland, but again that seems to have gone away

Yes that is very interesting indeed as the story about SMG protecting their regional identities was reporetd in the press in Scotland yesterday .

If a network promo is aired on Scottish TV they edit on ITV 1 out they may continue to do that when they use the network promos.

Where did you hear that?!

Any comment from SMG?

Sorry the only story was about SMG and the merger not about the promo dept see first post on the thread.

Would wonder how they would do that if they only have one promo producer. Will be interesting to see.

I think it will be just a matter of time before we see 'itv1 Scotland'! The promos for the 2 SMG stations have been merged for a while now and are quite poor. No station name check or logo and now only the blue boxes still it will be sad to lose the local voices - but then think of the cost save and with them thats all that matters!!

Bringing this old thread up to the surface I was just wondering (cos I haven't seen much TV this past couple of days).... has this happened then?