ITV to cut local news staff by 40%ITV has announced that it intends to cut 40 per cent of its regional news staff. ITV has announced that it intends to cut 40 per cent of its regional news staff.
The cuts amount to 429 job losses across the ITV regions. They go hand in hand with proposals to ‘rationalise’ its news bulletins in the England and Scottish Borders region from 17 separate programmes to nine.
FROM 46 TO THREE
Staff at Thames Valley tonight have been told that the Abingdon operation will be reduced from the current 46 staff to three – a correspondent, a reporter and a cameraman.
The correspondent will be the 'face' of the Oxford area, the reporter will in effect be a videojournalist, working on their own stories and also for the correspondent, and the cameraman will be a fully-fledged staff cameraman who will drive a satellite truck to enable live broadcasts and tape-feeds. There is the possibility of another contract freelance cameraman on a three-day week.
Newsdesk, production, craft editing and graphics will be moved to Southampton. Two reporters will be based at the Reading office in the Madejski Stadium.
The changes will mean that the news region covering Oxford will stretch to Crawley in the South East all the way to Weymouth in Devon. The so-called “local opt-out” will entail a swathe of the South East, from Brighton to Dover, opting out of the rest of the region. Oxford area viewers in search of local news will have to sit through endless bulletins from remote areas to see whether the valiant three based in Abingdon have been able to get any genuinely local stories into the bulletin.
A TRAIN OF DESTRUCTION
NUJ General Secretary, Jeremy Dear, said that the proposals would "set in train the destruction" of local and regional news”, and he criticised the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, which is charged with safeguarding a minimum level of public service broadcasting including regional programmes.
OFCOM HAS FAILED
"With ITV poised to begin making cuts before Ofcom even completes the consultation, the regulator's soft-touch approach has failed," said Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ.
The NUJ has warned the company that any attempt to force through the changes without meaningful negotiations with ITV unions will be met with strong resistance, including the possibility of industrial action.
The mood in Abingdon has not been improved by an announcement made the same day that management was reneging on a two-year pay deal, and would not be delivering on a promised pay rise in January of next year. AW 2008-10-04
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