[Humphrey Hacker]

It may depend where you were in the country.

I don’t recall early eighties Granada Reports ever looking poor. Interestingly Wales at Six on HTV Wales always looked fine as well (I could get both).
Or maybe I was young and easily impressed!

 I'd have to agree, to the extent that my local ITV stations (Southern and TVS) made tremendous efforts with their local news and current affairs  output.

I don't know much about Southern or TVS output so can't comment on that. It wasn't until the late 1980's IMO that Calendar started putting more "oomph" into their bulletins.