ITV Thames Valley

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**ITV Thames Valley**
Based in	Whiteley, Hampshire
Broadcast area	Thames Valley
Launched	4 December 2006
Replaced	Meridian North, Central South
Website	itvlocal.tv - ITV Local (shared with Meridian)
Owned by	ITV plc

ITV Thames Valley is an ITV news region covering the Thames Valley area of the United Kingdom. It serves the southern area of the Central franchise and the northern area of Meridian franchise. The service began broadcasting 4 December 2006, when the news operations of the two regions were merged into a single entity.

The move was originally expected to make over 40 workers redundant in editorial and production from Central South, however this has been reduced to around 20 by re-organisation of staffing roles[1]. The new region uses Meridian's digital studios in Whiteley, Hampshire, therefore making Central South's production facilities defunct, but brings the total number of regional ITV programmes from 16 to 17. Central and Meridian are both owned by ITV plc, which holds all the ITV franchise licenses in England and Wales, so this change amounts simply to an internal organisation.

1 Franchise area changes
2 Programming
3 Notes and references
4 External links

[edit] Franchise area changes

Map of ITV Thames valley region

No franchise area boundaries have been altered between Central and Meridian; only the on and off-air identity of the region itself have been re-branded, although as far as contracts with Ofcom go, ITV Thames Valley is not a legal Channel 3 franchise. However, as a consequence of the changes, the ITV contractor for the West of England, ITV West, was extended to cover the Gloucester and Cheltenham areas, previously served by Central South. This was achieved by an additional set of aerials fitted on the Ridge Hill transmitter broadcasting ITV West on analogue UHF 30 alongside Central West on UHF 25^[1]. However, the DTT coverage of Multiplex 2 from the transmitter (which contains the regional ITV service), will not be altered to accommodate these changes, and will solely broadcast the West subregion of Central. This complication will be resolved with digital switchover; and until then, both regions available from the Ridge Hill transmitter will provide regional news for Gloucester and Cheltenham[2]. However, as the Ridge Hill transmitter will continue to broadcast Central, the digital switchover date for that transmitter will be unaffected, switching with the rest of the Central region in 2011, despite the fact it will also carry ITV West which should be switching a year earlier, but viewers who decide to receive ITV West over Central from Ridge Hill will have to wait a further twelve months. However, the Oxford transmitter legally moved from the Central schedule for digital switchover, to that of Meridian and therefore the overall switchover date for ITV Thames Valley will be 2012^[2]

Note: The BBC has no plans to make any changes to its regional service supplied by the Ridge Hill, Oxford or Newbury transmitters.

[edit] Programming

All programming for the region is produced from Meridian's studios. However Central South's Abingdon base was retained as a newsgathering centre for the new service. It is not yet clear whether ITV Thames Valley will produce any non-news programming in the future, as currently the north of the region continues to receive Central's regional programmes (as that is the ITV franchisee) and the south continues to recieve Meridian's.

Following the departure of Andy Craig as one of the main anchors on Meridian Tonight's Newbury programme, it was announced that Wesley Smith (Central South's long standing presenter) would partner Meridian Tonight's Mary Green to host Thames Valley Tonight each evening at 6pm on Monday to Thursday from December 4th. Every Friday current Central News co-anchor Hannah Shellswell will once again team up with Wesley Smith to present Thames Valley Tonight while also working on special features.

The service does not extend to breakfast bulletins (i.e. during GMTV), however. Viewers now receive "GMTV News" at this time, which is a service covering the Thames Valley and the rest of the Meridian franchise area.