17th December 2023
Dear Readers
This Website campaigns for better Regional TV appropriate for all parts of northern North West England. That is, for Cumbria and northern Lancashire. This encompasses a huge area stretching from the Fylde Plain in the south up to the Cumbria- Scottish Border. The north-south span encompasses a distance of one hundred miles as the crow flies. Thus, what is appropriate local news-coverage along the Scottish Border will not be the same as that for Blackpool. Yet the north of this huge area gets BBC1 Regional News 80% about North East England whilst North Lancashire and South Cumbria receive regional news mainly about Manchester and Merseyside. This is unsatisfactory.
Most of Cumbria receives Regional TV output from ITV1 Border Lookaround, but northern Lancashire and much of South Cumbria get ITV1 Granada Reports . And ITV1 Granada Reports provides little news-coverage north of the M62 Corridor! Viewers around Carlisle, and up to the Scottish Border, have the following local and Regional TV News-services:
Regional TV News-services available for North Cumbrian viewers
BBC1 Look North (NE & Cumbria) is 80% about North East England and North Yorkshire. This leaves just 20% coverage (at best) concerning Cumbria. Much coverage- about Teesside and North Yorkshire- is irrelevant to North Cumbrians as those areas are up to 100 miles away. News-coverage also stops at the Scottish Border so BBC1 Look North tells North Cumbrians of nothing north of the Border. BBC1 Look North does not go south into Lancashire, so viewers learn nothing of North Lancashire either.
That’s TV Cumbria. This is a nightly broadcast of ten minutes of local news just about Cumbria, which is available on Freeview (Channel 8). This is certainly better than BBC1 Look North (NE/ Cumbria) because all the news will be about Cumbria, and some 50% of the news will be about the Carlisle area and northern Cumbria. However, this news-programme does not cover locations north of the Scottish Border or eastwards into Northumberland. Those are locations likely to be of interest to North Cumbrians. Furthermore, ten minutes’ broadcast time is not enough to get detailed in-depth news coverage of happenings locally.
ITV1 Border (England) Lookaround: This is the default ITV1 Regional TV News-service for North Cumbria. It’s much better than BBC1 Look North and That’s TV Cumbria. That’s because it provides very good coverage of Cumbria (especially North Cumbria) and it covers southern Scotland and western Northumberland. It’s a half-hour news-programme that covers Cumbria, the Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and parts of Northumberland. Typically, at least 50% of news-coverage concerns Cumbria, and much of that is about Carlisle and North Cumbria. News-coverage does not extend as far east as Newcastle nor south into northern Lancashire. In those areas, significant happenings may still be relevant to North Cumbrians. However, this Regional News-service is the best that there is.
Scottish Regional TV News-services available to North Cumbrian viewers
There are other Regional TV services available to viewers in Carlisle and North Cumbria. BBC1 Reporting Scotland can be picked up in locations with a clear view of the Sandale transmitter. The Sandale transmitter is eight miles south-SW of Wigton, not to be confused with the Caldbeck transmitter that carries BBC1 Look North. If one cannot get BBC1 Reporting Scotland from the Sandale transmitter, it is available on Sky (Sky Channel number 187, or Channel 108 Freesat). Viewers who live in North Cumbria may want to watch BBC1 Reporting Scotland to find out what is happening much further north. They may wish to do this if, for instance they have family and friends living in Scotland. Naturally, BBC1 Reporting Scotland will have no coverage of Cumbria. ITV1 Border (Scotland) can also be picked up from the Sandale transmitter. ITV Border (Scotland) carries special Scottish programming such as Representing Border that is not aired from ITV1 Border (England).
Viewers of Regional TV who live in North Cumbria, closer to the Scottish Border are served directly by three Regional TV- services and can get access to BBC1 Scotland and ITV1 Border (Scotland) too. The ideal news coverage for an area is eighty percent news-coverage within half an hour’s drive (all around the compass) then twenty percent up to an hour’s drive or travel time away. For folk living in and around Carlisle this means viewers want very good coverage of Carlisle, the North Lakes and areas along the Cumbria/ Scottish border. They also want coverage of significant happenings a bit further afield- the Tyne Valley, southern Scotland and North Lancashire. For that ITV1 Border Lookaround comes closest to ticking all boxes.
The Future for ITV1 Border Lookaround
The real concern in the future is that ITV.Plc decide to axe or merge ITV1 Border if there is another recession. ITV1 Border was merged with ITV1 Tyne Tees in 2009 after the financial crash, so it is a possibility. ITV.Plc gets no Public funding as such, so it has to respond to market pressures, though Public pressure through OFCOM can play a role too. It is largely because of Public pressure, and the involvement of local MPs that ITV1 Border Lookaround was fully re-established in 2013-2014. The only real safeguard against future loss of this service is for Cumbrians to watch ITV1 Border Lookaround. Then ITV.Plc are dissuaded from axing the service through higher viewership. The motto Use It or Lose It– as with rural bus-services- is so apt here.
That’s not to say that ITV1 Border Lookaround is perfect, what Regional TV News-service is? North Cumbrians have a much more bespoke Regional TV service than viewers in North Lancashire (who get Manchester-Merseyside dominated Regional TV from both ITV1 and BBC1). At the moment viewers in the Carlisle area and in North Cumbria have two localised Regional News-services, ITV1 Border Lookaround and That’s TV Cumbria. These provide local news that is much or wholly about Cumbria but both rely on private income streams.
Overlap coverage with ITV1 Border Lookaround
Unless viewers have strong links to the North East, there is little justification for Cumbrian viewers to stick with a news-service that focusses on Tyneside, Teesside and North Yorkshire but has little local coverage? Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead are just an hours’ drive away from places like Brampton and Longtown. However, news about Scarborough and Redcar is unlikely to be relevant to North Cumbrians. The content BBC1 Look North (NE/ Cumbria) is not geographic-appropriate to the residents of Carlisle or Aspatria. It would also be better if programmers for ITV1 Border Lookaround recognise the need for overlap coverage beyond transmission boundaries. That is, for some news-features, perhaps just 10% of total news-output. This obviates the need for North Cumbrians to watch BBC1 Look North on the off-chance of getting still-just-local news westwards of Newcastle.
The ideal ITV Border Lookaround overlap zone would encompass the Forth-Clyde Valley in Scotland to the north of the transmission area. It would also encompass Tyneside, Northumberland and western Durham to the east, and Lancashire/ western North Yorkshire to the south. Viewers in Penrith would then find out about the fatal crash on the M6 near Lancaster, viewers in Moffat (north Dumfriesshire) would know to lock their doors because of a Glaswegian serial killer, and motorists in Brampton would know about the heavy snow blocking the A69 near Hexham. Regional TV providers which cut off news-coverage at the edge of where the news is received do not serve their viewers best, particularly those who live near the edge of transmission areas.
Enlargement of transmission area and Selkirk Opt-Out for localised coverage to safeguard future of ITV1 Border
To some extent ITV1 Border programmers do realise the importance of overlap coverage, but there’s room for improvement. Including the odd serious news-feature about Hamilton, Hexham, or Heysham in ITV Border Lookaround– would increase viewership. That’s if this can be done in a manner that also increases local coverage from within the transmission area. Reviving the Selkirk opt-out so southern Scotland gets better coverage would be low-cost, but would enable more local news-coverage. It is higher viewer-numbers that would stop ITV.Plc eyeing up ITV1 Border for the chop when ITV.Plc next comes under financial strain!
There’s an argument for ITV.Plc to put all South Cumbria, northern Lancashire and west Northumberland to be in the ITV1 Border (England) transmission area. The ITV1 Border (Scotland) transmission area would then, ideally, extend to northern Northumberland. South Cumbria and northern Lancashire get very poor coverage from ITV1 Granada Reports, and ITV1 News Tyne Tees poorly cover rural Northumberland. Hence, there’s an argument for ITV.Plc putting northern Lancashire and rural Northumberland into the ITV1 Border transmission areas. If all South Cumbria, northern Lancashire and rural Northumberland are added, the population in the ITV1 Border transmission areas almost doubles. Excellent local news-coverage for all areas is then possible through the old Selkirk opt-out. The Selkirk opt-out would then provide 15 minutes of more localised news from within Lookaround for southern Scottish and North Northumberland viewers.
If the Selkirk opt-out is resurrected, continuity ITV1 Border Lookaround could cover Cumbria, west Northumberland and northern Lancashire better. There would still be some southern Scottish news for viewers in North Cumbria. And these same viewers would also find out about happenings an hour’s drive down the M6. However, the main result of such a change would be to innoculate ITV1 Border against ITV.Plc’s axe in future.
Responsibility of Viewers to safeguard a valued local TV News-service
Even as things stand, if North Cumbrian viewers switch from BBC1 Look North to ITV1 Border Lookaround that would pressurise the BBC to improve Regional TV-services for Cumbrian viewers. If viewers write to BBC1 Look North (NE/ Cumbria) programmers to explain why, that is even more effective. Whilst there is no way that North Cumbrian viewers would opt for BBC1 North West Tonight (with it’s coverage of Manchester and Merseyside), North Cumbria is still in North West England: Thus, a Regional TV News-service that is 80% about locations to the east of the North Pennines and (mostly) over an hour’s drive away is unsuitable for North Cumbrian viewers.
For North Cumbrians the BBC should provide Cumbria and Scottish Border opt-out news-coverage from within BBC1 Look North. Better still, the BBC should provide a new BBC1 Cumbria & Border Regional News-service altogether. Until that happens, viewers in the Carlisle area should stick with ITV1 Border Lookaround. Viewers should not increase the risk of ITV.Plc culling ITV1 Border (because of fewer viewers) until the BBC provides much more local coverage: Then, and only then, it will not matter so much if ITV.Plc axe ITV1 Border Regional programming.
A Shocking Scenario for North Cumbria
North Cumbria remains one part of northern North West England that has a good Regional TV News-service today, but could lose it in future. This scenario could arise with a laissez-faire economic government facing recession and fiscal difficulty. In such a situation the British government might pass legislation through Parliament to enable ITV.Plc to stop providing Regional News. In this political and economic situation the Government might allow the BBC to merge BBC1 Regions and cut other programming. They would do this to save money. Were that to play out, North Cumbrians would have the following choices of BBC Regional News:
- BBC1 Look North (covering a big North Region broadcast from Leeds)
- BBC1 North West Tonight (which might by then include North Wales)
- BBC1 Reporting Scotland.
For a Carlisle viewer, news would be about locations mostly over two hours’ drive and 100 miles away whichever option they selected!
Were this to happen in future, with Cumbrians only having the option of one of three big super-regions for Regional TV, it would be much harder for Cumbrians to pressurise Regional TV providers to provide geographic-appropriate coverage. That’s because programmers for each BBC1 super-region would know that Cumbrian viewers would have nowhere else to go. Writing letters to BBC1 Look North or BBC1 North West Tonight and complaining to MPs only goes so far.
Viewers may need to Fight to Keep ITV1 Border Lookaround
The only thing that would concern broadcasters is a wholesale loss of viewers, which would only happen with better alternatives available. That could happen if entire communities get together to provide a community-run local TV news-service. However community-run local TV services only succeed with the financial resources and technical expertise to run them. These resources might be hard to find within the 200,000 inhabitants of North Cumbria.
This is why local communities in and around Carlisle, and up to the Scottish Border should watch ITV1 Border Lookaround. They should encourage local friends and family to watch it too. If ever ITV.Plc threaten ITV Border Lookaround, local communities should come together to fight for their local news-service. Locals should fight for ITV1 Border Lookaround with greater determination than they showed in 2008-2009. That was when ITV Border’s merger with ITV Tyne Tees got the go-ahead. If Cumbrians don’t have ITV1 Border Lookaround and they lose That’s TV Cumbria too, they have no geographic-appropriate Regional TV. And that would be tragic for folk living in this beautiful part of the country!