This is a timeline of the history of the British broadcaster Westcountry Television (later known as ITV Westcountry, and now part of ITV West Country). Westcountry provided the
ITV service for the South West of England from 1993 to 2009, after which the service name "ITV West Country" has been used across the West and South West of England.
1990s
1991
16 October – The
ITC announces that
TSW has lost its licence to broadcast to south west England. It loses out to
Westcountry Television. Westcountry had tabled a lower bid but the ITC awarded the licence to Westcountry because it felt that TSW’s bid of £16.1 million was too high.[1] Westcountry was the second highest of the other two applicants and was awarded the licence with a bid of £7.82 million per year.
1992
6 February – TSW’s appeal to have the ITC’s decision to relieve TSW of its licence fails when the
House of Lords rejects the appeal.[2]
1993
1 January – After the chimes of
Big Ben, Westcountry Television goes on air.
20 July – Westcountry joins up with
HTV,
Meridian,
Channel Television and
S4C to form a joint advertising company operated by Meridian Broadcasting and HTV.[3]
28 October – On-air regional identities are dropped apart from when introducing regional programmes and Westcountry is renamed ITV1 for the Westcountry.
2003
No events.
2004
January – The final two remaining English ITV companies,
Carlton and
Granada, merge to create a single
England and
Wales ITV company called
ITV plc and the region is known on air when introducing regional programming as ITV1 Westcountry.
2005
No events.
2006
No events.
2007
12 September – ITV issues a statement to the
City of London, saying that it wished to merge ITV West with ITV Westcountry to form a non-franchise region, ITV West and Westcountry, from February 2009.[6][7][8]
2008
December – All non-news local programming ends after
Ofcom gives ITV permission to drastically cut back its regional programming.[9] From 2009 the only regional programme is the monthly political discussion show
16 February – As part of major cutbacks across ITV to its regional broadcasts in England the operations of
ITV Westcountry and ITV West are merged into a new non-franchise region
ITV West & Westcountry. The new ‘region’ results in a merged regional news service based in
Bristol called The West Country Tonight. However the first half of the main programme and the entirety of the late evening bulletin remain separate.[10]
5 September – Separate weekday daytime bulletins for the two main regions - west and south west - are reintroduced.
2012
No events.
2013
16 September – The south west opt-out from the Bristol-based regional news magazine is restored as fully separate regional programmes on weekdays with shorter daytime and weekend bulletins reintroduced.[11]
2014
1 January – Following the formal split of the
Wales and
West of England regions, a new region covering the merged west and south west regions -
ITV West Country - is officially launched.[12]