New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Radio Oxford weren't too badly affected as there's a backup generator which keeps it on the air.

Martyn Davies is presenting his last weather bulletin for Meridian today.

Retiring, or will he be remaining on just ITV National Weather and no longer travelling out to any region(s)?

He left the nationals last week.

Retiring. He's moving to Australia. He left ITV National Weather a fortnight ago.

Ah, I see. Cheers for info.

Thus proving that my viewership of ITV news/weather (both national and regional) is virtually non-existent!

Someone leaving a program doesn't always mean that barely anyone watches it, does it?

Eh? I think you've misread/misunderstood my sentence.

All I was actually saying was that my personal unawareness of Martyn Davies' moving-on derives from my non-viewership of ITV1 output.

No part my comment was saying either (A) that ITV News/Meridian News/ITV National Weather/Meridian Weather has particularly low viewership generally, or that (B) even if it does, that such a factor would constitute a reason for someone such as Martyn to leave. Especially as I personally have no basis on which to reach either or both of those conclusions.

You're quite right, I misread that. I'm sure I'm getting worse - sorry about that!

Although I do think ITV Weather graphics are looking prehistoric these days, really awful - hopefully a refresh will happen at the next ITV or ITV News rebrand.

Agreed.

The more years that have passed since the current style of BBC weather graphics were first introduced, the more embarrassingly and unforgivably anachronistic the ITV weather graphics seem in comparison.

Particularly considering that other broadcasters (e.g. Channel Four News, and 5 News) also now have a broadly similar approach to their respective styles of weather graphics.

Graphics that actually bear some resemblance to how weather looks in real life (e.g. a blue "puddle" in the sky to represent rainy areas), are infinitely better than "child's drawing"-style symbols of clouds etc.

To me, it absolutely beggars belief that a major broadcaster such as ITV *still* has such pre-historic "symbols" style weather graphics, twelve years into the 21st Century.

Shame. He's emmigrating is that right?

Lots of sound issues on BBC South East this evening. They have so far gone to two lives that haven't had any sound. We got a silent camera move about ten minutes in to the programme too, the kind of thing that would normally be accompanied by music. We also can also hear lots of paper shuffling as Evans' microphone has been left open during the start of reports.

They have just tried one of the lives again and it had sound this time.

Also, Polly Evans is on her jack this evening. She seems to be coping well though, even with all the sound problems and a short problem with the autocue too. I think Rob Smith was off last week too but Evans was joined by John Young then.

As I have been typing, she has just been joined in the studio by Neil Bell but he is only there to talk sport, not to present.