ITV Finally Separate Wales from the West

Charles Allen appears to have finally given the grand order of the boot to Jeremy Payne as this Waveguide story explains.

I've lost count of how many years it is that I've been suggesting this as a very sensible move, but suffice it to say I first mooted it at an IBA public meeting, prior to them becoming the ITC and then OFCOM.

But, is what was once a very sensible thing to do (and indeed, Peter Cadbury, chairman of Westward Television, long campaigned that HTV West shouldn't exist but that Westward should take on that patch) still the best thing for viewers now?

AFAIK, OFCOM still licence the franchise (which is STILL held by a company called HTV, however much Charles Allen would rather that isn't the case) as being one to cover Wales & West, there has been no fundamental change in structure to create a separate Wales franchise and a combined West/South West franchise.

What this undoubtedly means is that the 'West' region will pretty much cease to exist outside of regional news, and will just relay Westcountry regional programming (as it allready does, to a point).

I don't see any genuine work going on to replace the existing services provided by Westcountry and HTV West (for lack of a better term) with a single, newer, better service and for it to be disassociated with Wales for that purpose (which is what was being pushed for in the past, and which you, undoubtedly Nick, wanted to see happen), I just see HTV West disappearing even more into oblivion than it is allready and being replaced with nothing. How much longer before 'ITV West News' disappears too and is replaced with Westcountry Live with a West opt out? It'll all probably happen within a couple of years. This is anything but a good day for regional television on ITV.

To dissect the press release and provide translation for people too immersed in the wonders of 'ITV1':


ITV plc (not to be confused with ITV) has further destroyed HTV, which remains the franchise holder for the Wales and West of England franchise, by taking away the final semblence of a company entity existing, so that it may be merged even more into the London-based ITV1 channel which ITV plc are intent on creating.


Payne will be made redundant tomorrow


He was appointed as what STILL IS KNOWN as HTV West in 1997 after 11 years of working within the superior regional ITV network that was so conclusively destroyed by Thatcherite policies of the 80's and then hastened by the Blair government of the 90's.


ITV said it wanted to 'remove what it saw as a further irrelevant and pointless position, to further reinforce it's position that it would rather HTV didn't exist, underpinning it's continued commitment to ensuring that ITV regions are removed and replaced with a national channel from London called ITV1'.


Plymouth based WESTCOUNTRY TELEVISION managing director Mark Haskell, will now take charge of consulting with the West office once a month to see if some throwaway comment in a Westcountry regional show can be made in reference to the West, to preserve the illusion that any sort of West television service still exists, he will have a few token meetings with HTV West personnel to pretend that he has a commitment to them.


This should be good...


Ah, that old chestnut, usually trotted out whenever something which will further reduce it's commitment to regional broadcasting is announced.


I have one question: Will this be as good for viewers as the drastic cuts to regional programming quotas and budgets which have happed over the last few years apparently were good for viewers?


'ITV Wales' (HTV Wales in reality) allready had it's own management. The 'joint' managing director of the 'two regions' (in reality a single dual region) was there to oversee the running of the whole company ('the company' meaning HTV). And will that 'very best service to Welsh viewers' continue to be as 'very best' as the London operated, owned, and controlled service that exists now compared to the Wales operated, (largely) owned and controlled service which used to exist?


Typical tripe churned out of London which managed to be geographically inaccurate. The patch which 'ITV West' serves is not part of the south west, it is part of the west country. The patch which Westcountry Television serves is part of the south west.

The merits of merging the West part of the current Wales&West franchise with the South West franchise, creating a dual region, properly licenced under it's franchise to produce a service tailored to both parts of the region (something I do believe in, incidentally), is completely different to allowing ITV plc to effectively remove a region from it's franchise map in order to force further regional programming cuts.

And apart from anything else, this could be the start of a worrying precedence. How much longer will it be I wonder, before it 'doesn't make sense any more' to have separate management at Anglia Television and Meridian, or before we are told that 'Yorkshire and Tyne Tees have always had strong natural ties, merging them together to form one coherent operation will only benefit the viewer' and such and such. Anything which allows ITV plc to redraw the region map in spite of what the OFCOM franchise map indicates is not a good thing.

I quite accept, Chris, that regional programming on ITV is an ever reducing animal, due to numerous factors.

However, I still think that Devizes and Redruth have FAR more in common than Devizes and Llangollen, so the change WILL still be for the better today, as the bulk of the "HTV West" audience would far rather watch an "out-of-area" programme about another part of ENGLAND, like Fowey for example, than about Rhyl.

surely this move is designed to remove the need to bother making docos and what-not in the region (because at present, if they didn't, they'd end up screening welsh regional shows).

doesn't look to me like an IDEA crafted with the best interests of the people of the west, or the southwest in mind.

if charles had of announced TOTAL independence of the west region, committed with a budget to match neighbouring regions, then it might be something to celebrate.

but stretching 1 budget over 2 regions (something id imagine they couldn't do "properly" under the htv situation due to the welsh lobby) doesn't sound like an anagram of oogd to me.

Since when did Welsh programming get broadcast in the HTV West region?

Basically, I can understand the decision to finally destroy any links between the west and Wales. Historically, they were only linked to enable advertising money from the west sustain the welsh service.
Yet, creating a region stretching from gloucestershire to the Scilly Isles is absurd. At least HTV Wales and West were linked only financially. This operation seems to be creating a new macro region with very little natural ties.
I feel a far better option would be to leave Westcountry alone and to expand the ITV West region, so that it broadcasts from Mendip and Ridge Hill, perhaps with a news opt for the redge hill area. Then, savings could be made by merging the remaining Central South area (broadcast from the Oxford transmitter) and Anglia West - two regions with far stronger links.
This would enable itv plc to save money by closing Anglia West and would create far more natural regions, which would benefit viewers.

Correction: Ridge Hill

I presume that at the next licence round, the ITV English regions could all be re-aligned to more closely resemble the governmental regions. Sticking West and Westcountry together would seem to be a step toward that.

I'm all for a elongated ITV Westcountry region as long as it still provides Bristol and it's surrounding towns and cities with a local news service.

Westward and indeed TSW have always been after the Bristol region since ITV began, today its reality.

The end of an era!

The fact of the matter is that it's practically impossible for the new region to give Bristol a WORSE local news service.

Perhaps, if they started re-reporting the Plymouth Western Morning News, rather than the Bristol Western Daily Press it could ACTUALLY decline; but the chances are that they'll hire a reporter and, therefore, DOUBLE their strength.

See this page for their OWN proof that they currently only bother with ONE news reporter for the WHOLE area from Gloucester to Taunton and Minehead to Swindon.

It's actually a remnant from VHF transmission. With VHF transmissions extending much further than UHF transmissions, any standalone 'West' region would be almost impossible to sustain since it would enjoy virtually no 'exclusive' transmission space; both the fact that it would be entirely surrounded by other regions and it's small physical size means that the entire patch would be an overlap area, making the service unviable if it had to compete with the TWW (or whatever that ended up being called if it was Welsh only) on one side, Granada on another, ATV on another, Southern on another, and Westward on another - and have almost no area at all in which it was the sole receivable ITV station. It would be all but unworkable for an ITV company to survive under those circumstances. Hence it was decided to tag it onto the Wales region. The present situation is a surviving relic from the past.

On the face of it, it therefore seems so obvious to correct it, but it's not. If, in 1980 when the franchise rounds were being reannounced for what would soon be an all-UHF ITV system, they decided to split the regions and appoint two separate contractors to take over what was HTV Wales/HTV West, then that may have improved things. The present proposal, without OFCOM redrawing the franchise map and therefore completely unofficial, is just to basically remove HTV West and replace it with a sub opt of Westcountry (itself little more than a sub opt of a London-based ITV1 channel now). That I cannot recognise as progress.
Yet, creating a region stretching from gloucestershire to the Scilly Isles


Indeed, I've often felt the best thing to do with the franchise map would be either to properly extend (and appoint a broadcaster with proper interests in supporting) the present South West England franchise to include HTV West's patch, or else to restrict the South West franchise to Devon&Cornwall only, and turn all of Somerset over to a seperately licenced enlarged West franchise, and all of Dorset to the Southern franchise.

Just to clarify for Chris and others.

I'm NOT suggesting and have NEVER suggested that the BEST solution is for West and Westcountry to be merged.

What I've always said, and continue to believe, is that if we're starting from the assumption that West has GOT to be merged with SOMEBODY (the view which was always put forward strongly by the IBA staff at public meetings), then Westward/TSW/Westcountry is a FAR better option than Wales.

It was never made clear (for some STRANGE reason) by IBA staff at public meetings in the west, that the true purpose of the merged region was to support programme budgets in Wales from advertising revenues in the west, even if most of the attendees at the meetings knew that that was really the truth.