South West England & CI Thread

[Josh]

Spotlight on air as normal.

[James Vertigan]

Some sad news this evening. Chris previously worked for TSW.

[Toby brown]

Alex Beresford is leaving itv westcountry

[Rob]

Alex Beresford is leaving itv westcountry

Yes, he's going to be the weather forecaster for the new hour long ITV Evening News, it was announced a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.tvliveforum.com/viewtopic.ph...225#p66225

[Stanley Matravers]

Alex Beresford's status at ITV West Country has been dwindling for at least a couple of years, as his allegiances have increasing been towards GMB/National weather (and also other projects such as All Around Britain).

I would say that's he's been largely "3rd choice" West Country forecaster for a fair while now, behind Charlie Powell and Kate Haskell, having once been top dog a few years ago.

As soon as it was first mentioned on TVLF that he was going to be doing "touring the UK" stuff for the new look Evening News, that was pretty confirmation that he'd be fully leaving West Country.

Curiously, in recent weeks he seems to have suddenly been on West Country a lot more than has been the case for ages. It did initally make me wonder if his gradual defection towards national stuff was staring to reverse, but clearly not! More like a last hurrah before he deserts the region for good, it seems! (Except whenever his Evening News / All Around Britain travels happen to bring him back here, of course).

[RDJ]

https://youtu.be/xucI9cty5Qk

Look out for the screen burn on the Plasma Alex is standing next to during his first forecast. You can see the old ‘ITV West News’ logo burnt on the screen.

[Stanley Matravers]

A fair few Bristol-centric clips in Alex's "best bits" compilation, and the reference to him first joining the programme in 2004 would only apply in the ex-"HTV" area.

Did last night's "Plymouth" edition of the programme also include a farewell to Alex, but more tailored to that audience (including his "debut" for them being in 2009, when the Plymouth/Bristol merger occurred)?

EDIT: Just watched last night's "Plymouth" edition online. Alex's farewell was mostly the same as in the "East" edition as per the video posted by RDJ. They were just a bit more vague about how many years he'd been with the programme ("for over a decade"). The clip of his 2004 debut on ITV West News was still shown, but also avoid specifying when it dated from (and the fact that it's not something that Westcountry Television viewers would have ever seen at the time).

[London Lite]

First time I've seen an ITV Weather DOG used for part of Kate's live from Exeter.

[James]

This same graphic (complete with watermark) was used by GMB yesterday (Thurs) morning, during a report by Juliet Dunlop, so possibly just a generic graphic being used across ITV News/GMB.

[London Lite]

The reason for solo ITV News West Country so far this week is that Kylie Pentelow has Covid. I'd assume Jonty Messer is also isolating.

This comes weeks after the bulletin was the final ITV region to remove social distancing in the studio.

[fusionlad]

https://twitter.com/JanineJansenTV/statu...i5kkw&s=19

[WatchTower]

Interesting to see a joint Points West & Spotlight branded bulletin and they have opening titles for such an occasion too!

[fusionlad]

Shame there was no weather for Devon & Cornwall. Especially given that David Braine presented it.
Good opening titles and graphics though.

[WatchTower]

[TJTSW]

Shame there was no weather for Devon & Cornwall. Especially given that David Braine presented it.
Good opening titles and graphics though.

Guessing David had prerecorded the weather before the problems at plymouth happened.

The titles were good to have both, is this something they must have as a back up?! Remember when they were fitting out plymouth in 2015 and they had issues and they did a Points West & Spotlight duel programme before Justin went up and did a Special programme just for Spotlight