SCOTTISH TELEVISION CUTTING NORTHERN SCOTLAND REGIONAL TV IS BAD NEWS BOTH FOR NORTHERN SCOTLAND AND CUMBRIA

2^nd February 2026

 

GEOGRAPHICALLY RELEVANT REGIONAL TV IN CUMBRIA IS THREATENED IF OFCOM APPROVE SCOTTISH TELEVISION’S PROPOSED MOTHBALLING OF REGIONAL TV FOR NORTHERN SCOTLAND 

 

Dear Readers

 

Regional TV services, specifically the few those that cover rural areas in the North and in Scotland are under threat. Proposed changes for Regional TV broadcasting in North and North-East Scotland by the main independent TV broadcaster for Scotland could, if given the “Green Light” by OFCOM lead to ITV pushing its luck with the proposed mothballing of ITV Border Lookaround. That would greatly impact on Cumbria where viewers would be forced to choose between ITV Granada Reports (which rarely gets north of Preston) or ITV News Tyne Tees.

 

In January 2009 viewers in Cumbria, on the Isle of Man and in south-west Scotland lost ITV Border Lookaround, as the area covered by a beloved Regional TV service- providing excellent local news was amalgamated with the ITV Tyne Tees transmission area. Viewers in Cumbria and south-west Scotland received just ten minutes opt-out coverage of Cumbria and southern Scotland amongst news-coverage about Tyneside, Teesside and Wearside. Afterward, the Isle of Man was transferred to ITV Granada, resulting in very little coverage of the island itself and much more focus on Manchester and Liverpool through ITV Granada Reports. Viewers in Cumbria and the South of Scotland- with the help of local MPs- put up a fight, serious objections were raised in Parliament about the lack of Scottish programming for viewers in the south of Scotland  and the thirty-minute stand-alone ITV Border Lookaround news-service was restored (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookaround). But it is developments further north that cast a cloud over ITV Border Lookaround once more.

 

Regional TV Cut: A Kick in the Teeth for Northern Scottish Communities          

 

Scottish Television (STV) is the Scottish equivalent of ITV for viewers in England and the extreme south of Scotland. They propose axing separate Regional TV for viewers in Northern Scotland, which already covers a huge region extending from St Andrews northwards.  STV want to offer a Scottish news-service with just eight minutes opt-out programming covering northern and north-east Scotland. And there are indications that OFCOM will approve this mothballing of a much respected and valued Regional TV service that was originally provided by the old Grampian Television over thirty years ago (link here: https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/275692-news/).

 

If OFCOM approve plans for Scottish Television to mothball the dedicated Regional TV service for viewers in the far north of Scotland, including remote island communities as those on the Shetland Islands (which are closer to western Norway than Glasgow, from where all STV programming will be broadcast), folk living in the North of Scotland will get a News-service that is not in any way, shape or form local. Some 80% of the coverage will not get north of Perth or Dundee, over two hundred miles south of Wick or Stornoway. The interests, the concerns, and wider regional links of folk living on the Outer Hebrides or even the far north of Sutherland are massively different from those of folk living in Sterling, Edinburgh, or Motherwell. If OFCOM allow STV to have their way it would be a big slap in the face for Shetlanders, Orcadians or Hebrideans: If these islands off the very north of Scotland have wider regional links with anywhere it may not be, by preference, with Glasgow or Edinburgh but a couple of hundred miles across the northern North Sea- towards Norway.

VILLAGE OF NENTHEAD IN THE NORTH CUMBRIAN PENNINES ON A BRIGHT CHILLY DAY AFTER SNOWFALL. PHOTO COURTESY OF IAN PENNELL 28TH JANUARY 2026

 

If STV think that their proposed mothballing of Regional TV services for northern Scotland would go down well, they may have a big shock. Viewers are likely to switch off STV’s News At Six try and find alternatives such as That’s TV Aberdeen (Freeview Channel 8) if they live in North-East Scotland, seek out local online TV such as the You-Tube based The Orkney News (link here: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheOrkneyNews), or communities might rally together out of anger at what has happened to the Northern Scottish version of News at Six to set up their own Local News services. The Shetland Islands are the most northerly part of the UK, and are over 300 miles from Glasgow or Edinburgh, and they might be inclined to abandon any Glasgow-based news-broadcasting altogether were Scottish Television to go ahead with their mothballing plan.

 

Norwegian Local and Regional TV- services

 

Folk living in Orkney or Shetland might do well to brush up on their Norwegian so that they could watch the Regional TV for Vestlandet (in western Norway), Distriksnyheter Vestlandsrevyen, often presented by Mariann Reiterås. If you have friends in the extreme north of Scotland who might be interested the link- to watch after broadcasting when the local news for Vestlandet is loaded online is: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/distriktsnyheter-vestlandsrevyen. They could even watch the special local VSTLND.TV (for Western Norway) – link here: https://www.vstlnd.tv/nb.

 

Many Shetlanders don’t consider themselves Scottish, but have a closer affinity with Norway because of historical and cultural ties, they have their own local language Shaetlan, which has more Norwegian words like bairn, hjem, shün, and fell– so I am sure that this advice would be warmly received if STV have their way and force them to watch “local” news about Glasgow and the Central Belt of Scotland!

 

Regarding Regional TV in Norway, a country with a population of just six million inhabitants (and just 150 miles north-east of the Shetland Isles), local communities are supported with the provision of excellent Public-services- including well-resourced Regional TV services. There are ten Regional TV services provided by Norsk Rikskringkasting (NRK), the National Norwegian TV broadcaster, covering this beautiful land that at its narrowest west-to-east point along the Arctic Circle is less than the distance between St Bees Head and Kendal, though it stretches over 1,500 miles from Kristiansand in the far south of Norway to the northern tip of Svalbard, high up in the Arctic. Additionally, there are twenty-four local TV channels serving Norway. Now twenty-four local TV channels divided into the six million inhabitants of Norway equates to one Regional TV service for every 250,000 inhabitants: That’s the equivalent of Cumbria getting two bespoke Regional TV services, one for North Cumbria and one for South Cumbria! NRK provides one Regional TV service for every 600,000 Norwegians. In Norway local rural communities fight to keep the Regional TV services serving their communities (example here: https://www.kampanje.com/medier/gi-oss-nyhetene-tilbake-nrk/167764) and the authorities ensure that folk continue to be adequately served with good local news-coverage.

VIEW NE FROM NEAR VOSS SKI-RESORT, WESTERN NORWAY. THE EASTERN END OF SNOW-COVERED SLETTAFJELL IS TO THE LEFT. SHETLANDERS MIGHT PREFER NEWS ABOUT WESTERN NORWAY TO NEWS ABOUT GLASGOW IF STV GET THEIR WAY AND AXE A VALUABLE REGIONAL TV SERVICE FOR NORTHERN SCOTLAND!  A FROSTY WINTER DAY. PHOTO COURTESY OF IAN PENNELL 21ST DECEMBER 2025

 

Norway has five times the geographical area of Scotland but is similar in terms of total population. Scotland has just two and a half TV Regions (barely matching Regional TV coverage by area), and it is soon to have just one and a half if STV get their way. The BBC, of course, just provides BBC Reporting Scotland – merely duplicating the proposed coverage area of the new Scotland wide STV News at Six. Regional TV coverage in Scotland is currently limited, and the situation appears likely to decline further.

 

Implications for Cumbrian Regional TV

 

Appalling though the implications of STV’s proposed mothballing of the North Scotland Regional TV service are for folk in Northern Scotland, it is what the STV proposals mean for Regional TV in Cumbria. For ITV.Plc will be watching what OFCOM rule that STV can do with interest, before making a commercial decision as to what to do with regards their own bottom-line. ITV Border’s Lookaround will once again be in the firing line if STV are allowed to mothball their News at Six (North version). If OFCOM allow STV to provide “local” news for the Northern Isles that’s mostly over 300 miles away from them, ITV.Plc might judge that OFCOM will let them axe ITV Border Lookaround so that folk living in Whitehaven or Workington must contend with “local” news about Sunderland/ Newcastle or Manchester/ Liverpool some 100 to 150 miles away. Why would they not?

 

Thus, OFCOM allowing STV to get their way in Northern Scotland is the thin edge of a very pernicious wedge! The next downturn in the UK is likely to see ITV.Plc then looking at Regional TV as a way of making savings. Which Regional TV services would be mothballed/ axed? It will be those Regional TV services that cover large rural areas, but which have relatively low populations, such as the transmission area covered by ITV Border, that will be ripe for the chop.

 

In the mid-1980’s the BBC transferred northern Cumbria from the BBC Look North transmission area to BBC North-West: Up to then, the BBC NE transmission area served North-East England, most of Cumbria and most of North Yorkshire. But North Cumbrians then received BBC North West Tonight  transmitted from Manchester, and there was (rightly) a huge outcry. This is because folk living in Carlisle, Penrith and Workington had no regional connection with Manchester and Merseyside, if North Cumbrians travelled further afield it was often to Newcastle or to the Northumberland countryside. Additionally, there was often little news about Cumbria from BBC North West Tonight, even when that Regional TV News-service was responsible for covering all of Cumbria at that time. After five years, with strong public pressure the BBC backed down and transferred northern Cumbria back into BBC North-East, broadcast from Newcastle. You can read more about Cumbrian’s battle with BBC Regional TV here: https://northwestisnorthwest.org/2021/07/thirty-years-ago-people-power-changed-regional-tv-in-northern-cumbria-and-it-can-in-northern-lancashire-too/. However, at least there was Border TV (as it then was) and Lookaround to fall back on in the late 1980’s, which provided very good local news-coverage of Cumbria and just over the Border into southern Scotland (as it does today): Thus Cumbrians could switch over from BBC North-West Tonight to Border TV Lookaround (and Cumbrians many did).

 

The issue facing Cumbrian viewers of Regional News today is the possibility that there might not be a good local TV service at all in the future. If OFCOM approves STV’s mothballing of their Northern Scotland Regional TV service then, as night follows day, ITV.Plc will submit their own proposition to OFCOM to cut or reduce Regional TV for low-population Regions. It is just a matter of time: It’s possible that the next recession combined with falling advertising revenues for ITV.Plc will be what prompts them to try cutting Regional TV-services.

 

It is little more than ten years since ITV.Plc restored ITV Border Lookaround  in full for viewers in Cumbria and southern Scotland, again after Public and Political pressure.  But it is likely that Cumbrians will have to fight anew to keep their valuable ITV Border Lookaround, to contact their MPs and to campaign so that both ITV.Plc and OFCOM know the strength of feeling on this matter. If ITV Border goes, then the best that local folk in Workington, Whitehaven and Keswick would get, is a ten-minute opt-out within a revamped ITV News Tyne Tees and Border with the Cumbria and southern Scotland news. The remaining 15 minutes, news will be about North-East England, and there would be no better local news-coverage from BBC Look North (NE/ Cumbria).

 

There is the ten-minute nightly 6 pm local news-programme That’s TV Cumbria, available on Freeview Channel 8. However, only viewers in the North and West of Cumbria can get it, the signal from the Caldbeck transmitter- from which That’s TV Cumbria is transmitted- is blocked from much of South Cumbria and northern Lancashire by the Lakeland fells. The entire Freeview Network is going to be updated and improved, allowing programmes to be watched on computers, thus resolving transmission problems. Until that happens, the only recourse to getting lots of news about Cumbria on TV is from ITV Border Lookaround. Where folk don’t have a signal for it in South Cumbria and northern Lancashire, they can still watch the day’s Lookaround on the ITV Border website about two hours after being broadcast live.

 

Cumbrians will Again Need to Fight for their Local TV News

 

All of that will be lost if ITV.Plc mothballs the ITV Border Region. Viewers in South Cumbria cannot get That’s TV Cumbria, so they will be left with a choice of ITV Granada Reports with its 80% coverage of Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire or a new ITV News Tyne Tees and Border mostly focussed on North-East England, but with a ten minute opt-out for Cumbria and the south of Scotland. BBC North West Tonight, with more coverage of Lancashire and a little coverage of South Cumbria might then be the best of some appalling options, but BBC North West Tonight does not cover northern Cumbria in news-reports. All that is then needed is for the That’s TV Network to fold, or to just stop producing local news, and Cumbrians will be completely without any topically or geographic-appropriate local news-coverage. A You Tube based Cumbria TV service might spring up in that case, indeed I would hope if Cumbria lost all of its local TV services that Cumbrian communities would come together to set up their own Cumbria TV.

 

The Isle of Man already has it’s own You-Tube based Isle of Man TV (link: https://www.youtube.com/c/IsleofManTV) because this small Crown Dependency, a country in its own right, of just over 85,000 inhabitants does not have it’s own TV service. Instead, it gets “local” news broadcast from Salford from both BBC North West Tonight and ITV Granada Reports. Most nights the Isle of Man gets no coverage at all, but 70 to 80% of coverage of Manchester, Merseyside, and Cheshire. Manx viewers get no real coverage about the news, topics, and places of interest to them from mainstream TV services, and so must fall back on a You Tube Channel to get news about their own country! It would be tragic if folk living in Carlisle, Penrith or Workington lost their dedicated local news-service that has served them well for many years, and they have to start scrabbling about on You Tube to “watch” local news about what is happening within sixty miles of their communities!

 

Both the BBC and ITV.Plc will not be discouraged from cutting Regional TV for Cumbria if they think they can get away with it, if they think they have a captive audience of viewers with nowhere else to turn: Viewers who live in Whitehaven or the North Lakes should not be forced to choose between news mainly about the M62 Corridor from Manchester to Liverpool, or news mainly about Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside. Folk will need to fight hard to keep local news-services so that pressure is kept on the main Regional TV broadcasters to up their game.

 

Local and Regional TV, covering local news and wider regional affiliations of relevance to the communities they serve, can and should be both a topically and geographically- relevant public resource for communities. Regional television should not be left to the market, just as libraries, waste collection, and local policing aren’t left to the market. Northern Scotland- and likely soon- Cumbria will be prime examples of what happens when Regional TV is left purely to the Market.

 

In view of what Scottish Television is doing to Regional TV in the North of Scotland it is incumbent on Cumbrian communities to be alert to the possibility of ITV.Plc trying something similar with ITV Border Lookaround: After all ITV.Plc tried to mothball this excellent local news-service 17-18 years ago, and it is only because Cumbrian and southern Scottish viewers fought back hard (with help from local MPs) that ITV Tyne Tees and Border were effectively split up again, and ITV Border programming re-established.

 

Cumbrian viewers are well-practiced at fighting to keep local and geographically relevant TV services, having had to do this more than once over a period of some years. Cumbrians may have to fight to hold on to their cherished ITV Border Lookaround with greater vigour than ever- in order to ensure that ITV.Plc leaves ITV Border Lookaround as it is!