[interestednovice]

The ITV Border region contains two seperate main transmitters.

The Scottish part of the Border region is served by the Selkirk transmitter (in the Scottish Borders county), and the English part is served by the Caldbeck transmitter (in Cumbria).

The former carries BBC Scotland, the latter carries BBC North East & Cumbria.

The Scottish part of the ITV Border region even has a small number of opt-out non-news regional programmes most weeks of the year, whilst viewers in Cumbria see whatever network programme the rest of England is getting.

So, I fail to see that anything is forcing the existence of a single "Cumbria & South Scotland" region for ITV1 or preventing it from being easily disbanded should the need/desire to do so ever arise.

Indeed, it’s currently two separate sub-regions known as ITV Border (Scotland) and ITV Border (England), with the facility to be totally separate - as you allude to with the placement of transmitters - if that is required. There has been discussion in the past about STV “gaining” the Scottish part of the region, but I believe it was thought that local people liked their ITV Border programmes and did not feel they would be better-covered by STV, so Ofcom decided to leave the situation as it was.

In the event of Scottish independence, STV would probably gain that sub-region and be Scotland’s national Channel 3 broadcaster. I believe that the SNP have, in the past, also said that it would be their ambition to continue with a licence fee but use Scottish LF income to fund a new “SBC” to replace the BBC in Scotland.

In that scenario, it’s possible that STV could continue broadcasting a lot of ITV programmes, as VM do in Ireland, and SBC could have similar arrangements, possibly, with the BBC. But both would be run as separate broadcasters, not the current “affiliate” setup with STV.

I am sure that ITV would buy STV if the opportunity came along (i.e. a devaluation in STV shares, for whatever reason, meaning that ITV could pay a “fair” but comparatively cheap price compared with historical value) but that opportunity does not look imminent. However, you never know when it may appear. “Completing the set” would still appeal to them, I think, as then they would no longer need to consider STV at all at a network level. The network “complications” of having STV still exist, even in terms of branding on competitions etc, are obviously something that they would rather not have to deal with. Better for ITV plc to be able to operate ITV 1 just like all their other channels - with only minor regional variations across all of them. Then they can sell truly national and/or local ads, which would appeal.

Only 15 years ago, the network was still clearly a major headache for them. GMTV still held the breakfast license, Channel TV, UTV and STV all existed independently and they were quite restricted as a result - with things like the breakfast 9:25 end time cast in stone. Then the STV dispute started up and highlighted how strange the setup was.

Since then, every time they have sensed an opportunity, ITV have picked up all the other franchisees one by one. I have no reason to think things would be any different, hypothetically, with STV even with a shift to streaming over time. I personally think ITV are just in waiting game mode at the moment.