Accurate maps of ITV regions

It appears that Oxford is now officially part of the Meridian region, as the transmitter and its relays are covered in Ofcom's Meridian license specification and absent from Central's...

http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/tv-broadcast-licences/current-licensees/channel-3/

Interestingly, despite it looking like the West area has been separated from Wales and transferred to Westcountry, as the license names appear to be Westcountry ITV (South West & West of England) & Wales ITV respectively; Mendip and its relays appear in the Wales license and not the Westcountry one.

Ridge Hill is down as a main transmitter in the Central license and a relay of Mendip in the 'Wales' one.

The London split still exists, as does the breakfast license. What's the point? In fact, it could all just be one big license (bar Scottish & Grampian) if there's no intention of any of them being separately owned again. Maybe Ofcom want to keep their options open on that one for whatever reason.

Individual Licences re-inforce local news requirements, one single licence doesn't offer the micromanagement of this.

Breakfast licence is a national licence, but as the last time I watched any breakfast TV in any great detail was back in the TV-AM days, I have no idea if current GMB adverts are national (as they were in the TV-AM days) or local.

Here is the question? how can the adverts be national? How would there comply with Scottish law? There are number of items like beer which have very strict pricing on them in Scotland. There would be nothing to stop people making formal complaints about ITV and Ofcom would have no other option but to fine ITV.

I wasn't aware TSW did any sub regional ads (and certainly not programming) ?

Whether that was the case of not, the infrastructure linking the studios and transmitters together (as well
as the playout operation at HTV Cardiff) was provided on NTL digital SHF links. TSW had used analogue BT links, and I'm pretty sure even by Dec 92, only Caradon and Stockland were fed (and with the same feed). Redruth and Huntshaw were RBL Caradon, and Beacon Hill was RBL Stockland ?

Somewhere on You Tube is a promotional video produced by NTL and WCTV that explains all this, I can't find it though

Edit: Found it: It's not on You Tube, it's linked at the bottom of this page

http://www.ntlpa.org.uk/memorabilia

Don't think I was very clear - what I meant is that my belief is that Westcountry's decision to do subregional news was made off the back of a separate commercial decision to do subregional ads and therefore the infrastructure to split the region existed anyway making the subregional news financially viable. I didn't mean to imply that TSW had subregional ads, which they never did AFAIK (certainly plenty of Plymco ads present on 1992 recordings made in Redruth anyway).


That's an odd one. At first glance on the licence I did wonder if this was just another ITV swifty, in that 'legally splitting West from Wales and combining it with Westcountry' actually meant nothing other than just changing the name on the franchise to reflect that rather than the franchise itself changing since transmitter lists for both are unchanged from Westcountry & HTV Wales/West.

Yet when it comes to regional programming, the 'Wales' licence clearly shows the enhanced Welsh regional programming only but nothing for the West region. Just seems to be a bit of sloppy work on OFCOM for not properly changing the licence as ordered by ITV plc.

That said, I do wonder if an obscure breach claim (is there even a procedure to do that?) can be filed against the 'Wales' licence for not providing the specified amount of regional programming on transmitters in the West which the licence says they are supposed to be covering.

On a more serious note, it is depressing to see just how toothless OFCOM is - the 'regional programming' section (what's left of it anyway) specifies separate news services for each part of the Westcountry/West region. Ah, I thought, that means having half the main evening news programme shared across the two is a breach of contract. Except OFCOM have been rather nice and given them a quota of fewer hours for dedicated regional news, working around what ITV have decided to do whilst being able to claim that they are protecting regional services. Go to a region like Granada and you'll see a higher number of hours required to cover them having a dedicated news service.

I don't see why necessarily. Wales & West have had different requirements for years within a single license. The only benefit splitting them yields is that the two areas can theoretically have separate companies operating their Channel 3 services but that's something not on the agenda.

Ah, OK

The same way every digital channel and C5 manages to successfully show adverts nationwide without issue?

With the phrase "excludes Scotland/NI/ROI/etc."

I've mentioned this here before, but certainly until recently (and maybe this is still the case), the regional names (or abbreviations) still featured in the presentation department's paperwork. Daily routine sheets (not that different to those from Thames and Tyne Tees in the 80s/90s I've shared here) refer to the CAR/LWT split, and say things like 'NET TO ALL BAR CHA', 'NET TO ALL BAR STV/GPN', and refer to programmes like Jeremy Kyle as 'a GRA production' and Emmerdale as 'a YTV production' - some weekday daytime show (possibly Dickensons Real Deal or Loose Women) was labelled as 'an LWT production'. The last such paperwork I've seen was from five or so years ago, but still long after these company names appeared on air!

I think that there were macro regional adverts on TV-am and GMB, similar to the post 1993. channel4 system?