One of the consequences of Michael Grade's review of ITV will be the cutting back and merging of regional news output on ITV.
This will surely be the final death knell of the ITV regional network,having already lost most of its regional identity over the past few years.
ITV revealed its 5 year plan to the stock market yesterday morning which included plans to shed up to a third of its annual regional programming budget.As this only really amounts to news programmes,it is pretty obvious where the cuts are going to come from.
Regional news services are to be cut from 17 to 9 saving around £40m.
Michael Grade claims that (via Press Gazette)
The current structure of regional news is based on an analogue rather than a digital map."We have developed proposals to symplify the sub-regional provision and allow the news services of the smallest regions and sub regions to be combined while ensuring that all regional viewers will continue to receive a service of sustained quality and with critical mass
Only time will tell whether this is the right move but the announcement brought a flurry of critisism from broadcast unions which claim the move will lead to hundreds of job cuts.
On the plus side the Company are looking to increase its in house production from 54% to 75% and has confirmed that ITV is being ditched for good.
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