[London Lite]

The West Country West sub-region was a 30 minute live special from Cornwall covering the first rocket launch into space from the county with Sabet Choudhury at the launch site alongside reporters Charlotte Gay, Grace Pascoe and Kathy Wardle at SpacePort Cornwall.

I'm assuming the Eastern sub-opt was Eli-Louise Wringe and a cover presenter with a normal bulletin pre-recorded.

[TJTSW]

Was the itv West Country late news live or include the space take off? I watch on ITVX and don’t have a tv in the bed room but of course get itv London news on that

[Stuart]

Which English Region's studio is actually the smallest (and therefore the template)? Birmingham maybe (hence it being one of the first to change)?

Hull is slightly smaller than Birmingham, but also significantly longer - Hull is 13.5 x 7.2m (~97 sqm), while Birmingham is roughly 11 x 9m (~99 sqm). If the identical set thing is to be believed (which I doubt), this would mean that it'd have to fit in a space of 11m x 7.2m (~79 sqm) - which would be ludicrously small. The Washington studio is a similar floorspace (~80 sqm), but is virtually square so not as constrained with regards to depth. It'd also be quite a low set owing to Salford's set having an unusually low ceiling.

A set of that size would occupy just half of the Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth studios, as well as less than a third of Newscastle's. A major waste of space. It also wouldn't fit in the current Salford studio, owing to its weird shape.

Plymouth always seem to delete the memo about standard set design, and 'go rogue' from the start.  

The current incarnation (from the 2015 HD refurbishment) was changed after a while to include a red screen behind the presenters to make the head shots look more 'BBC Newsy'.  Unfortunately, this meant that when using the winter/night time background mode, the nice reflection effect of the city lights on the water were completely lost.  Such a waste.  


(This pic has lights for 'winter daytime background mode' as last night's evening/late programmes were live from Newquay rather than the studio, so I didn't have another one to hand)

EDIT: This is the slightly darker background setting this morning. You can still just about see the light reflection effect still visible through the red barrier.

[HTVbest]

This happened on 28th December!

[Former Member 406]

ITV News West Country (east) is being presented by Victoria Davies & Eli-Louise Wringe in the studio.

Dunno whether the "Plymouth" edition is getting an all-female studio edition too, or e.g. a live OB edition from somewhere in Devon/Cornwall.

[Toby brown]

ITV News West Country (east) is being presented by Victoria Davies & Eli-Louise Wringe in the studio.

Dunno whether the "Plymouth" edition is getting an all-female studio edition too, or e.g. a live OB edition from somewhere in Devon/Cornwall.

The south west edition also had eli louise and Victoria

[Stockland Hillman]

ITV News West Country (east) is being presented by Victoria Davies & Eli-Louise Wringe in the studio.

Dunno whether the "Plymouth" edition is getting an all-female studio edition too, or e.g. a live OB edition from somewhere in Devon/Cornwall.

Whilst it's completely fine to have two same gender presenters,  it is disappointing they couldn't find a single male in the whole region to step up. 

No wonder there is a lack of male presenters in the UK where there is no talent development. ITV regions being particularly poor - both on screen and in more senior producer/editor roles.

Gender and socio-economic balance are just as important in cultural diversity.

It's telling that Alex Beresford never (afik) presented ITV West news whem he was there, and had to wait until GMB to step upto main host.

[London Lite]

They've used all-female duos before, Ellie Barker and Eli-Louise Wringe have presented together as well.

[all new phil]

ITV News West Country (east) is being presented by Victoria Davies & Eli-Louise Wringe in the studio.

Dunno whether the "Plymouth" edition is getting an all-female studio edition too, or e.g. a live OB edition from somewhere in Devon/Cornwall.

Whilst it's completely fine to have two same gender presenters,  it is disappointing they couldn't find a single male in the whole region to step up. 

No wonder there is a lack of male presenters in the UK where there is no talent development. ITV regions being particularly poor - both on screen and in more senior producer/editor roles.

Gender and socio-economic balance are just as important in cultural diversity.

It's telling that Alex Beresford never (afik) presented ITV West news whem he was there, and had to wait until GMB to step upto main host.

What a ridiculous post. No talent development? There are countless development and work experience programmes in tv news, particularly within ITV.

[Stockland Hillman]

Whilst it's completely fine to have two same gender presenters,  it is disappointing they couldn't find a single male in the whole region to step up. 

No wonder there is a lack of male presenters in the UK where there is no talent development. ITV regions being particularly poor - both on screen and in more senior producer/editor roles.

Gender and socio-economic balance are just as important in cultural diversity.

It's telling that Alex Beresford never (afik) presented ITV West news whem he was there, and had to wait until GMB to step upto main host.

What a ridiculous post. No talent development? There are countless development and work experience programmes in tv news, particularly within ITV.

Dealing with what was actually written, exclusively about PRESENTERS development,  at each level  there aren't as many men brought on screen for bullies and main programme fillins as woman in most regions.  Some regions do better than other.

It's hard to explain without outing the people involved, but it's a phenomenon that actual staff describe to me, they don't feel mentored in that side of things and feel discouraged from spending time developing the skills. How true that perception is open to debate but it cant fairly be described as ridiculous.

It's not unnoticed that when jobs do arise, Guy Phillips has gone for external BBC candidates and internal moves of already quasi lead names (Anglia,  West Country from BBC; Channel, Meridian, Central all in-house long term)

Skipping over the obvious example given in favor of insults doesn't add to anything, but if you want to play for 'likes' then by all means.

For core business requirements like reporting,   ITV do offer good training and development, but it's not altruistic - work experience at different sites functions as staff cover and headcount for the business. A few months at ITV Channel isn't going to make you a much better skilled reporter after all, however cute the little outing may be.

If you work in regional TV, Phil,  perhaps take time to talk to your male colleagues and explore the topic in an open and trusting way and really listen to what they tell you. It won't be everyone's experience but it a reality for far too many. 

BtW, It's not a "culture war" issue,  50+ woman in particular have some horror stories to share as well, which equally don't look great on certain broadcasters - but we're talking about specific F+F pairing today.