Central Tonight

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Central Tonight

Format	News
Run time	Central Tonight: 30 Minutes Central News: Varies
Creator(s)	ITV Central
Starring	West: Bob Warman Llewella Bailey Joanne Malin East: Steve Clamp Sameena Ali-Khan Lucy Kite
Channel	ITV1 Central
Air dates	(as Central Tonight) July 24th 2006 – present

Central Tonight is the main news programme on ITV Central. Since Monday 24th July 2006, the regular 6pm programme has been entitled Central Tonight, replacing the old name of Central News at Six to come in line with other ITV regional news programmes with "... Tonight" at the end. The programme has two versions which are identically branded - one covering the east of the region and one for the west.

Until 1st December 2006, there was a version of the programme for the south of the region (which remained Central News at Six), but this has now ended with most of this part of the region becoming part of the unofficial ITV Thames Valley region along with the northern part of ITV Meridian.

1 Central News East
2 Central News South
3 Weather
4 On Air
5 External links

[edit] Central News East

The East sub-region was launched on 5 March 1984. The original intent had been to launch Central News East on 1 January 1982, but problems with the then-powerful broadcasting unions prevented its launch for over two years. Even when the first broadcast took place it was disrupted by a strike of ITV techinicans and so it was broadcast from the studios of Central West in Birmingham. Central East News was moved to Central West's Gas Street, Birmingham studios after ITV shut the Central East studios in Nottingham were 2004 as a result of a costcutting project across the ITV Network.

The ITV Central headquarters in Birmingham Gas Street.

News Gathering for Central East is still based in Nottingham at Terry Lloyd House which opened in February 2005. Terry Lloyd House is named after the former Central News reporter Terry Lloyd, who was killed in Iraq whilst covering the Iraq war for ITV/ITN in 2004.

Presenters include:

Sameena Ali-Khan
Steve Clamp
Louisa James
Rajiv Popat
Lucy Kite
Gareth Owen
Helen Finch
James Wright

[edit] Central News South

Central News South is the now defunct version of the programme which was first aired on 9th January 1989 with Wesley Smith & Anne Dawson and with special guest Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards. The first edition is well remembered for being dogged completely with technical problems. Unlike Central West & East, Central South was based at, and broadcast from studios in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Presenters included:

Wesley Smith
Hannah Shellswell (nee. Stewart-Jones)
Alex Forrest
Sally Mules
Ken Goodwin
Richard Franklin
Christopher Peacock
Mark Lipscomb

It was announced on 6th June 2006 that Central News South was to end after 17 years and merge with other ITV news regions. Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire & Swindon would merge with the existing Meridian West region to form a new ITV Thames Valley service(with its 6pm news programme to be named Thames Valley Tonight). Gloucestershire was to become part of the ITV West (formally HTV West) region broadcast from Bristol. Herefordshire was to rejoin Central News West from Birmingham. The last regional bulletin was on Sunday 3rd December, and the last "Central News"-branded pan-regional service was aired during GMTV on Monday 4th December.