5th August 2021
Dear Readers
If you live in Cumbria, your go-to news-service for Local and Regional Television should be ITV Border’s Lookaround, which almost invariably has 50% of it’s news-coverage devoted to the county. It is, by far the best geographic- appropriate and all round regional and local TV news-service that there is for Cumbrians, particularly if you live west of the M6 in northern Cumbria. BBC1 Look North (NE/ Cumbria) does have at least two or sometimes three news-items about the county but the other 80% of North East England content is scarcely relevant to anyone living west of Carlisle and the M6: However, the coverage of south west Scotland and the Scottish Borders on ITV Border’s Lookaround is more likely to be closer and within an hour’s drive of where you live. In any case, ITV Border, with its greater coverage of Cumbria and recognition that Cumbria is in North West England makes this the obvious choice over BBC1 Look North any day.
This applies equally if you live in South Cumbria, and your default ITV1 Region is still ITV Border from Kendal northwards. If you live in those parts of South Cumbria where ITV Granada Reports is your default ITV Regional News, getting ITV Border is not an insurmountable problem unless you have no Internet, no Sky TV and cannot get the ITV Border signal from your aerial- and if that is the case get a computer and Internet (so you can watch ITV Border’s Lookaround from their website- here https://www.itv.com/news/border) or a Sky subscription package so that a Windermere Post-code can be put into your Sky Digibox- so that you get ITV Border, not ITV Granada. Do whichever is the cheapest and most practical option. If money is still tight but you can get Freeview then at 6.pm on weekdays, switch over to Freeview Channel 8 to watch That’s TV Cumbria (website here http://www.thats.tv/cumbria/).
Neither ITV Granada Reports nor BBC North West Tonight serve South Cumbrian viewers with local and geographic- appropriate Regional news-coverage. BBC North West, which does cover Lancashire fairly well and has typically one news-item about South Cumbria most nights will have periods of a week or more when it does not get north of Preston, typically when major sporting events are on -and, of course, the Olympics in Tokyo is taking up to ten minutes of coverage on each bulletin at present!: Coverage of more northern areas are sacrificed to make room for Sports coverage at such times! ITV Granada Reports almost never covers Cumbria at all.
So, if you live in South Cumbria and can get ITV Border’s Lookaround by default do not watch BBC North West Tonight– which seldom comes within an hour’s drive of places like Ambleside, Windermere or Dent village- and which will never cover major happenings just 30 miles north of you because it is “Outside of their Patch”. Roger Johnson and Annabel Tiffin will let you down with regards to local news! If you live in those parts of South Cumbria where your ITV default Regional News is Granada Reports with the BBC Regional news being North West Tonight – in places like Millom, Ireleth and Grange over Sands- it is sound advice to try and avoid watching either, but to try and get ITV Border’s Lookaround and- if that is not possible or affordable- try and get That’s TV Cumbria at 6.pm on weekdays on Freeview Channel 8. You will finally get news that is local and geographically relevant to where you live and the nearby places that you visit, and you will be happy to have made the effort.
In the process you can also send an email to BBC North West Tonight at nwt@bbc.co.uk and send an email to ITV Granada Reports at granada.reports@itv.com to tell them why you won’t be watching their regional bulletins (because they don’t cover Cumbria) and what you will watch instead. It could be that the threatened-loss of their Cumbrian viewers will jolt the Regional News producers at BBC North West and ITV Granada into taking more care of their most northerly viewers- by making room for news about Cumbria. That would be a good outcome!