New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Presenting 6th, 7th and 8th too.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh309/tigerwoods78/Schaf.jpg

Looking GREAT!

And it was all the better for doing it. More content, fewer promos!

Meridian Tonight has been to Weymouth THREE times this week, with their own reporters too & came live from there twice! Quite funny when the majority of viewers in Weymouth cannot receive ITV Meridian! I'm sure they will be there a lot during the Olympics too...

Just watched last night's South Today on iPlayer (didn't see it on telly last night).

Having compared and contrasted with the "BBC Oxford News" iPlayer option, it was literally 100% pan-regional South Today, with absolutely no opt-outs or differences for the Oxford sub-region.

Much of the programme was a live OB from Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, covering the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's visit there. The OB was presented by Jerome Sale, giving him a rare (possibly unique/first-ever?) on-screen outing for viewers further south. Sally Taylor did the opening headlines pan-regionally from the Southampton studio (which included an (also pan-regional) opt to Jerome Sale's OB to headline the Henley coverage), and also the main round-up of all the day's other (i.e. non-Henley/Queen) news.

The 18:30 South Today usually generally has absolutely no news or sport stories whatsoever from northwards of Reading (not even in the pan-regionally-broadcast latter half of the programme!), thus making the pan-regional weather map at the end seem rather at-odds with the rest of the editorial content, as seen by us "non-Oxford" viewers.

EDIT: Despite being shown pan-regionally, I'm sure that they used one of the non -"Oxford friendly" versions of the ST title sequence! (I.e. No place names and/or images from northwards of Reading) It's too late now for me to re-watch it on iPlayer and double-check.

By the way, can anyone here please identify what the circular building shown as the 5th image in the BBC Oxford News (and ST's "Oxford-friendly" variant) titles is? I've never had the slightest clue what or where it is, as I'm not familiar with that part of the world. Cheers guys.

I've always thought that if the pan-regional version of ST's titles is going to have just one token image from the Oxford sub-region, then it surely ought to use the Radcliffe Camera (i.e. the domed building from the Oxford News endboard) as that is surely the "Big Ben" of the sub-region, whereas the other images seem - to varying degrees - comparatively obscure.

This one...

http://tv-live.org.uk/wp/media/bbcnews2008/regions/oxford/oxford200905.jpg

Yes, that one!

I thought it might by the GCHQ building near Cheltenham originally. However, it's nowhere near Oxford and, if I remember rightly, not part of the region anyway!

However... after a bit of digging, I think it might be part of the Harwell Research complex that's near Didcot. http://www.diamond.ac.uk/dms/Images/about/10EC2268_Diamond_aerial_view.jpg

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ll=51.574509,-1.310806&spn=0.007121,0.021136&sll=51.574509,-1.310806&sspn=0.007121,0.021136&t=h&gl=uk&z=16

Cheers for that!

Definitely an obscure choice for ST's pan-regional titles! I have however always liked the way that the building's circular shape, and the accompanying circling camera movement, really suit the two-overlapping-circles part of the graphics that the clip has been inserted into.

It's the Diamond Light Source building at Harwell. One of those particle accelerator things if I understand it correctly. It was chosen for the titles because it's such a striking building from the air, (even if it's slightly obscure).

If I remember right, the other locations in the titles are Banbury Cross, Silverstone, The Canal at Upper Heyford (I think), Oxford Railway Station, Harwell, Shrivenham (I think) & Carfax Tower.

Going back to Monday, Jerome has presented pan-regionally in the past, and done the occasional voice report into weekend sport bulletins. The Afternoon news on Fridays has been pan-regional from Oxford since the Sunday Politics went pre-recorded and Jerome has presented a number of those.

Cheers for info.

As I'm not familiar with that part of the world, I'd always assumed that at least one or two of the title sequence images were from Buckinghamshire and/or Swindon. I'm surprised that it's an Oxfordshire-only selection.

Even just a single "token" image of, say, Aylesbury town clock tower (or whatever), in an otherwise Oxfordshire-only selection would at least be *something*.