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Thursday, September 25, 2008, 07:03
The merger will also see news bulletins shrunk from 30 minutes to just 15, and the programmes could even me made outside the region.
Staff are expecting to receive redundancy notices early next week.
It is feared nearly all of about 100 workers will be axed.
Under ITV plans, some journalists will be retained, but the numbers halved to a total of about 30 from both the merged stations.
Unions today said the mood at the Plympton-based home of ITV Westcountry was ‘grim’ even though staff had been expecting this announcement for a year.
They also said it would lead to a news service that would be ‘significantly diluted’.
John Andrews, the station’s National Union of Journalists’ spokesman, said: "This will almost certainly lead to the closure of the Plymouth studio.
"Everybody is expecting to get redundancy notices at the beginning of next week.
"We will fight for whatever jobs remain, but people are not happy, it’s a pretty grim prospect."
Media regulator Ofcom today publishes details of the second stage of its public service broadcasting review.
Amongst a raft of changes to the ITV network it proposed: "ITV West and Westcountry news to be merged, but with separate 15-minute sequences in the flagship bulletin and separate late evening bulletins."
A consultation period now extends until December, but ITV staff are expecting the company to announce next week that it is going ahead with the merger anyway, as part of a £40million cost-saving programme because the station is struggling with falling advertising revenue.
Staff expect the new system to be in operation by January 1.
This system would see reporters, some of whom would also be cameramen, scattered throughout the South West.
They would report to a newsroom which could be set up anywhere in the region but is unlikely to be at the existing centres in Plymouth or Bristol because they are too big.
The material will be ‘pulled together’ by correspondents who appear on screen, backed up with the team of reporter/cammeramen.
But the actual news programme, which will be 30 minutes long but divided between Devon and Cornwall news and a bulletin from the rest of the region, could be put together at a ‘hub’ anywhere in the country.
This would mean there would be no need for technical or support staff to be based in the South West.
"We are waiting until the beginning of next week when ITV produce its definitive plan of where the newsroom will be and how many staff there will be," said Mr Andrews, who is also the stations defence correspondent.
The ITV Westcountry station successfully won a franchise bid in 1992 and began broadcasting from new studios at Langage.
It succeeded Westward and TSW which had previously been based at Derry’s Cross.
At the height of its success, ITV Westcountry employed about 180 people, but later saw that number whittled away.
It still, however, maintains its district coverage, with reporters based in regional centres such as Truro, Exeter, Weymouth and Taunton.
But there are concerns the focus of regional broadcasting will be lost under the proposed changes.
"People in Devon and Cornwall have a similar attitude to life and share the same problems," said Mr Andrews. "But putting it in with places like the Cotswolds, a London commuter area, and the M4 silicon valley of Swindon to Bristol, it’s a completely different area to the one people here love."
ITV Westcountry is not the only station affected by the Ofcom proposals under which regional news face changes to ease pressure on ITV as it suffers an advertising slowdown.
Ofcom said between £145 million and £235 million of additional public funding would be needed by 2012 to keep public service broadcasts at current levels on channels other than the BBC – ITV1, Channel 4 and Five.
The regulator’s report did however propose to maintain ITV1’s quotas for original UK productions, independent productions and national and international news in the face of increased competition and the digital switchover.
ITV1 could have quotas for programmes made outside London reduced from 50 per cent to 35 per cent under the proposals.
The minimum quota for ITV’s regional non-news programmes should also be cut from 30 minutes to 15 minutes on average a week, Ofcom suggested.
ITV is seeking to rationalise its regional news delivery in England and the Scottish borders from 17 separate main programmes to nine.
The report’s provisional conclusions said the BBC should remain the ‘cornerstone’ of public service content and its core programme and services budget should be secure.
It said audiences should have a choice of providers in most areas of public service content, which the market alone would not provide.
Ofcom is proposing a number of models for providing public service broadcasting in the future.
These include an evolution of the current model, a system where only the BBC and Channel 4 receive public funding, or a competitive model where broadcast, online and multi-channel providers can compete to deliver the content.
Ofcom said its findings so far had shown that there was virtually no support for a BBC-only model.
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