New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Asa any chance of the South ending please?

Can't do flash on here so it's on you tube (use watch in HD link) :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBhQiZut8Yw

Also the Ian Axton goodbye clip :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzTOTotirbQ

I get the feeling from that, Debbie left in bitter times then.

I saw the new pan south weather map just now and who the heck is Mona Luka ??? Gemma's gone

Mona Lukha (aka Manali Lukha) is in charge of the ITV Weather unit at Gray's Inn Road. She sometimes presents the London regional weather, particularly at weekends.

Some stuff about the team on itvlocal.com/meridian. The page shows 13 reporters, one weather presenter (Simon Parkin) and Fred And Sangheeta. If this is the new team then I'll find it hard to see how thay can cover all the main stories.

Worth reading Robin Britton's blog post about how the new programme will work:
http://blogs.itvlocal.com/Meridian/2009/02/08/welcome-to-the-new-meridian-tonight/

Oh well it's goodbye Gemma then, great shame. I did'nt expect this. Perhaps the beeb will sign her up or she'll go national on ITV weather ? Obviously good looks, a friendly happy and very professional presentation count for nothing then. Madness

I know madness as I cant say im a fan of Simon Parkin.

Wow - so it looks like not a single member of the previous Central South team will be on the new programme.

Very sad indeed - and, looking at the shape of the new region on that blog post, more than a tad ridiculous. It's like the old days when Oxfordshire was part of the BBC London/South East region - only worse.

Oh deary deary dear.

I love how the website is desperately trying to retain a relationship with the viewers. Phil Hornby loves to holiday in New York apparently...

One big block of news stories for the South in a half hour slot? - It's never going to work.

A seperate 18 minutes doesn't seem *that* bad, when you exclude the weather, the pan-regional bit will only be 10 mins

The sub-regional bits was supposed to be only 15 minutes

The region is a strange shape though and weighted so 'west' is much much larger than east, what with the west being 3 former regions combined. Looking at that I wonder if it may have been better to either give the old Central South part back to Central or give the South East to London?

Creating 3 sub-opts would of course be better and would have been perfectly acceptable