New look STV News at Six

Intro very much reminded me of Newsday on BBC News with the presenters in London and Singapore both walking into position.

So a complex set of pre records like the ITV regions?

Is STV ex-Grampian uneffected by these changes?

The only pre-recorded section is the opening sequence. Everything else is live - except the weather forecast, we still have separate forecasts for West and East. No changes to STV North.

GLASGOW


EDINBURGH

STV don't like to do things the easy way, do they?

I like the show but I'd be amazed if they maintain it as two separate opt-outs as the years go by. Intrigued to see what the viewers make of the chats as well. I personally like them but I can see many getting grumpy.

The content is key as always and the news agenda is solid, so that's the most important thing.

It’s nice to see STV doing something a bit different, although sounds like a challenge for the team to produce it. So Sport/Weather Forecast are separate for the East & West, but how much of the rest of the programme is split?
It’ll be interesting to see how they manage a big story that is very East based, a crime report shall we say about an incident in Edinburgh not really a lot of relevance to the west of the region, so does that mean it’ll go down the running order? So that more general Scottish (or central Scottish) News can feature at the top of the programme or will the West have to endure a top story about something of only little relevance?
Also the voiceover at the start isn’t very good, it should be the “This is STV News at Six with xxx in Glasgow & xxx in Edinburgh” the other way round feels odd. I’m not sure I’m a fan of the actual voice either.

The voice is the edinburgh producer of stv news.

It all seems a lot of effort for what should be a 10 minute opt for the eastern sub-opt.

Does seem an unnecessary duplication of resources.

I imagine that outside of the football season, the sport will probably be pan-regional, but during the football season, they'll be able to maintain the east/west sport split for at least 3 or 4 days per week, if not all week.

It feels like STV has been looking around at how others do it. As some people have pointed out, the Newsday inspiration is fairly obvious. But they've also looked at ITV's approach and decided they're not keen on the "record one show, do one show live and join together for the rest of it" approach.

In fairness, STV's approach makes more sense but I'm to be convinced that they really need to go through all this for one fluff story, a sports round-up and a joint weather forecast. It feels like they're thinking a little too much about the stuff the viewers aren't really going to notice.

However, I come at this from a west of Scotland viewpoint. It may well be that a sudden shift to just having one show and HIbs and Hearts immediately being replaced by the latest from Rangers and Celtic would have jarred too much.

Have you ever seen the behind the scenes gallery view from all 3 versions, prior to the change? It essentially had Glasgow & Edinburgh producing the same output, even 'lives' were shared across both regions, sometimes all 3. Timing had to be perfect to ensure everyone reached their marks. It's possible that this is easier for them, especially if the reporter knows who they are talking to.

That being said, it would be interesting to see STV do a version of CBC The National across the whole of Scotland, as let's face it a lot of the news is shared.