[lookoutwales]

There is much discussed about how the changes impacted late nights on ITV but much less said about early evenings, partly I guess as the Evening News launching was somewhat successful, though at the cost perhaps of the regional content, especially the regions that had hour long bulletins or additional regional shows in the 6.30pm hour.

On the one hand, you did have a number of regions going head to head with the BBC equivalent in that slightly awkward 6.25pm slot (Central and HTV spring to mind)

On the other, those regions who were persisting with hour-long programmes were always going to struggle in the 5.30pm slot - Granada Tonight was still in its 'This Morning North West' phase while Tyne Tees had tried to do make two shows for the price of one (North East Tonight and Primetime) but gave up after barely a month.

Other areas simply used the 5.30pm for non-news regional shows but I don't think they lasted too long - particularly once schedules began to streamline across the network and regional quotas were cut.

I get the impression that it was around this time the BBC's regional news programmes were starting to establish a firm ratings lead UK-wide over ITV. Certainly, Granada Tonight was falling behind to North West Tonight when Gordon Burns came on board and I think Calendar was overtaken by Look North, helped by the return of Harry Gration.

Sure I read somewhere that Look North was pulling in twice the number of Calendar viewers (this was before LN Hull launched)