New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

We are all entitled to our favourites!

I thought I'd add something to the regional news situation here in the South.

My local pub landlord and landlady were on both South Today and Meridian Tonight recently being interviewed about the size of their water bill. You can see the Meridian report here. They commented to me that the BBC reporter (Alan Sinclair) was an absolute professional who swept through his report, where as Meridian's Tom Savidees kept fluffing his lines and making mistakes.

Before you can tell if this has ANY relevance you need to look at the background, it depends if it was a like for like report: Both VJ's?

Or was the State broadcaster staffed by reporter, camera crew, picture editor, graphics and a minion on the news desk planning who gave him a background brief, plus the chance than another BBC reporter for radio had done the same story already.

Not that it is wrong of the BBC to work this way, but it is far easier to get it right when all you have to worry about is the script - the talented team of professionals do the rest.

If Meridian was a VJ job, then busy environment often cause the reporter to stop more. You have no way of knowing if anything is affecting the report (noise etc) so play it safe and start again.

I'm sure the reporter feels great about the job they clung onto in the massive ITV cuts being bitched at with no idea of the real facts. How nice of you to pass on second or third hand opinions from that highly skilled profession 'pub landlord'.

I think you'll find that Allen is a VJ too...

I think the days of trained weather forecasters are gone, if you listen to people like Simon Parkin they do not actually say anything very technical. Their role is it seems just to read off a monitor for 30-40 seconds, as proven by Amanda Piper doing just as good a job as he does or doesn't.

it does make them look very cheap though, one day she is a news anchor & the next she is doing the weather. I thought Phillipa Drew was supposed to be Simon's cover.

Trained weather forecasters like Gemma you mean ?!

Having personally met the landlord in question, I would certainly trust his judgement on this, and many other matters.

I see The Peoples' Millions is back...how can this be?

Because it's not ITV's money to give away. They're just giving it away on behalf of the lottery. I think there's more chance of getting a cup of tea out of a chocolate teapot than for Michael Grade to allow the regions to give away ITV money.

I noticed on Meridian that that announced it on the sub-regional part of Meridian Tonight, so I wonder if the money contests will be between sub-regional causes or pan-regional.

Or Kaddy, although I don't think either of them were hired primarily for their weather foreasting skills.

No idea who Kaddy is but yes probably so but not so now that's for sure, I can't work out how Parkin got the job over Gemma makes no sense, another reason why he irritates me

Probably because they had a "fair" selection process, so had to keep presenters from each of the 3 merged regions, I imagine to give more of a sense of continuity to viewers... Though the ones they picked just do not seem to "work"...