Time for ITV to put up or sell up
Written by author on March 3, 2013
The consultation document released by Ofcom just over 10 days ago could pave the way for the return of a dedicated “Border” news service.
In 2010 the flagship Border news programme at 6pm on weekday evenings achieved the highest percentage share of the audience (38%) of any of the nation’s or region’s news programmes offered by any Channel 3 licensee in the UK including those offered by STV.
There is a reason for that…
Historically “Lookaround” has been the most popular and successful of ITV’s regional news programmes due to the population size of ITV regions, Border as was prior to the merger with Tyne Tees was the smallest populated franchise with the exception of Channel television, it is easy to be popular in an area with a small market.
“Lookaround” has been the go-to option for viewers to try and get local news for one simple reason, the BBC option is viewed as a “National” news show and not a local one. The BBC has always marketed itself as BBC Scotland where as for many years ITV played on it’s unique identity of local-ness, with it’s 3 franchises in Scotland; Border, STV Central and STV North ( formerly Grampian ).
For news hungry viewers in the south of Scotland the daily fix of local news comes from ITV as few areas have a daily newspaper, Carlisle have the News & Star, Newcastle have The Journal in the morning and The Chronicle in the evening, Glasgow have the Evening Times.
In the radio market again, localness is an issue. In Carlisle the area is served by BBC Radio Cumbria, with strong local programming, commercially it is served by the Bauer station CFM, with local bulletins throughout the day, in the south of Scotland the option is poor with CFM covering some of the region, Radio Borders covering the Scottish Borders and South West Sound covering Dumfries and Galloway. All 3 of these stations are owned by the Bauer group and provide minimal news coverage, and use a network news service after 7pm. Again the only other option is BBC Radio Scotland which again is seen as a service more akin to a Scottish Radio 4 service. The “local BBC service Radio Solway” provides local news and weather bulletins on weekdays at 6:54am, 7:50am, 12:54pm and 4:54pm.
As you can see, the reason for “Lookaround”’s high rating is due to the fact there is simply nowhere else to turn for local news.
The “Border Scotland” region no longer transmits, originally an option on the analogue system to serve the Scottish side of the region with tailored news ( Border Scotland originally had up to 12 mins of news for the South west of Scotland ) and Scottish sports coverage. The service also carried STV’s Champions League coverage at a time when ITV held the rights to the competition which allowed STV to broadcast games involving Scottish teams over the games being carried by the ITV network feed.
This feed originally continued when ITV launched on Satellite when ITV joined the Sky Digital service ( to ensure only Scottish viewers got the programming the NDS postcode lock was used ) however due to limitations on the DTT service at the time only the main Carlisle feed was transmitted on DTT and when the merger of Border & Tyne Tees was approved the service was discontinued.
Just now the first 15 mins of “Lookaround” are pre-recorded and played out before the 2 sides of the service are merged for the “magazine” type portion of the show.
The proposals put forward from Ofcom range from the return of a dedicated Border Scotland service on Digital Terrestrial Television, this service would carry a range of specific programmes including a new current affairs programme, this would have increased costs but the new region would also create additional advertising revenue for ITV this ofset some of this cost.
ITV may be allowed to continue as is with the addition of a new current affairs programme for the “Border” region as a whole, but again coming up to one of the most important times in Scotland’s history ahead of the independence vote in 2014 it must be asked how much time would a network who’s news base is in Gateshead be willing to spend focused on events which target only a third of there market, a market which depending on the vote it may lose access to in 2016.
One option which has been abandoned is the redrawing of the ITV franchises to form a single franchise for Scotland ( although it is proposed that Wales will merge it’s franchises into a single welsh one ), I am not saying that STV would provide a better service when it is headquartered in Glasgow than one headquartered in Gateshead. But surely the strength that STV has in Scottish news programming has to be acknowledged, it already produces a nightly current affairs programme “Scotland Tonight” which broadcasts Monday to Thursday hosted by John McKay, which can be watched by anyone in the UK with a few button presses on the Sky remote control.
Maybe the easiest thing for ITV to do would be to buy “Scotland Tonight” from STV and show it themselves.
ITV need to do something to get the people, back on side, the drop in “local” news created some resentment across the region to the ITV brand, there is a chance for Ofcom to show there metal and make ITV put the “local-ness” back into the local broadcasting that it was originally meant to deliver.
The consultation is open until May, but read and get your comments in to Ofcom early.
Would you like to see the return the old “Border” format? Would you like to see STV provide more Scottish news coverage in the region or do you think things are okay as they are??
