News is coming through that Ofcom is minded to allow ITV to cut its regional programming from four hours a week to less than two. Only six years ago, before the last round of cuts, the total was ten hours per week. This would affect Wales particularly, I suggest.
It seems that the news bulletins are not affected, but there must be doubt about the future of "Wales this Week" and other factual programmes.
"Sharp End", the politics programme, was already scheduled for the chop. Whatever ones view of Mai Davies's interviewing style, she had the virtue that she was hard on everyone, irrespective of party. Over the years, Welsh ITV - and HTV previously - has been rather more even-handed than BBC and we shall miss their alternative viewpoint on the relative importance of political issues in Wales.
Update: It appears that news is not untouched, either. There will be no requirement to transmit a Welsh news bulletin at weekends.
1 comment:
I would regard this as another erosion of our civil liberties; this very much narrows down the choice of regional news and current affairs programmes. We will be more dependent on the BBC to provide regional news.
We are somewhat limited in what regional news we get in Wales anyway, the standards of journalism isn’t the best from our regional newspapers.
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