Rebranded Regions

Morning, I'm not too good as I still have a slightly stuff nose but there's still things that need to be done.

One of them being my prospects meeting this morning, and there's likely to be another comedy meeting in the library tonight so no rest for the wicked really.

As for the dissertation, that's going on hold until I hear from Ana, because I don't want to waste time getting it wrong, although there's no wrong answers really in a dissertation. Only a completely wrong way to present it.

I'm not used to double spacing as I'm sure you'll see from this very site.

I was up at about 9am with Moyles switched on as usual where Alesha Dixon who was meant to be on today has fallen ill.

Hopefully she'll be alright for the climb which is due to start pretty soon.

On that note, producer Rachel has been absent in preparation as she's one of those who will be going, leaving Aled to do the menu rundown after Dave's done his Tedious Link. Well, 10 minutes after they've played the record.

Personally I think Aled's more enthusiastic than Rachel is but that's probably because he presents on the station as well, with the Surgery in for the ridicuously absent.

Rachel made an appearance during the part of the show that used to be "Half Time" with Chris announcing "Rachel's here!".

However instead of singing the Blue Peter theme like they do for Aled, they made up a song that went to the tune of Neighbours and sounded like this'

"Rachel

Everybody loves R Rachel!

With her Kidderminster accent

And her silly whiny voooiice!"

Dom mentioned that as his wife's a big fan of Neighbours he'll start singing that song when it appears on the telly, although the theme tune now sounds nothing like the original version that Chris and the team were singing to.

On a lower note, it's been a bad week for regional television as all the ITV regions have merged resulting in rebranded local news programmes and several long standing presenter being made redundant.

This was actually planned before the recession but can still be seen as a reflection of how hard things seems to be getting

Over in my neck of the woods Meridian Tonight is now the entire region from Hampshire to Berkshire, Kent to Oxfordshire etc. Fred Dinenage now presents the programme having been a familiar face in the centra south for 30 years although it's seen a departure for Fred's ex co-presenter Debbie Thrower and Wesley Smith in the South Midlands who has presented Central South for 20 years.

Anglia's West and East news programmes have been brought back together after nearly 20 years with Caroline Oldrey departing after what I believe is 25 years as she used to be an in vision announcer at the Norwich based broadcaster.

Over in the West, the South West service Westcountry has merged with what used to be HTV in Bristol with Westcountry Live anchor Richard Bath being one of those getting the drop.

Richard of course being a familiar face as he used to present London Plus when I was younger as well as the ITN Late News on ITV Night Time.

Tyne Tees and Border have merged together providing a programme for both Carlisle and the North East, and finally in the Midlands, Central News in the East and West has now become one programme hosted by who else, Bob Warman.

Whilst it's good that some of the established presenters like Bob haven't lost their jobs the mergers haven't gone down well with regular viewers who have made valid points about news items based in areas that are about 100 miles away from them.

For local news that's pretty poor but I could see it coming eventually.