ITV News West Country

ITV News West Country is a British television news service broadcast and produced by ITV West Country. It is broadcast from studios in Brislington, Bristol, with district reporters and camera crews based in newsrooms at Plymouth, Exeter, Truro, Taunton, Swindon and Gloucester.

ITV News West Country
Title card for the west sub-region, depicting Smeaton's Tower
Presented by	Sabet Choudhury & Alex Lovell
Country of origin	England, United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Executive producers	Nimesh Joshi (Head of News)
Production locations	Bristol, England
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	29 minutes (18:00 broadcast)
Production company	ITV West Country
Original release
Network	ITV1 (ITV West Country)
Release	16 February 2009 (2009-02-16) – present
Related
The West Tonight Westcountry Live ITV News ITV Weather The West Country Debate

The programme currently transmits into two sub-regions.

• West serving Bristol, Somerset, the majority of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, and parts of north Dorset.
• South West serving Devon, Cornwall, Isles of Scilly, western Dorset, southern and western Somerset.

Its main competitors are BBC Points West in the West region; and BBC Spotlight in the South West region.

Southeastern parts of Wiltshire, eastern parts of Swindon and some parts of eastern Gloucestershire receive ITV News Meridian. The north of Gloucestershire receives ITV News Central.

History

The nightly regional news programme was launched on 16 February 2009 as The West Country Tonight, following the merger of two regional news services – The West Tonight (ITV West) and Westcountry Live (ITV Westcountry).^[1][2]

From 24 November 2016, ITV News West Country began broadcasting in HD on Sky and Freesat only. Freeview and Virgin Media carry ITV News West Country only on the standard definition ITV channel.

On air staff

As of 2024^[update], the presenters are Alex Lovell and Sabet Choudhury. Notable on air staff include Ben McGrail (Somerset correspondent). Notable former on air staff include Lisa Aziz, Alex Beresford, Bob Crampton, Mark Longhurst, Jonty Messer, Kylie Pentelow, Peter Rowell and Steve Scott.

Main presenters history
Years	Presenter 1	Presenter 2
2009	Lisa Aziz[3][4]	Steve Scott[5]
2009	Ellie Barker or Claire Manning
2010	Vanessa Cuddeford
2010–2012		Ian Axton
2012–2013	Cordelia Lynch[6]
2013–2017	Kylie Pentelow[7]
2017		Mark Longhurst[8]
2018–2019, 2020–2022		Jonty Messer[9][10]
2019–2020, 2022	Eli-Louise Wringe[11]
2022–2023		Sabet Choudhury[11]
2023	Kylie Pentelow[12]
2024–	Alex Lovell[13]

Sub-regional service

When the programme launched in February 2009, two opt-out services for the regions served by its predecessor news programmes were retained. These incorporated the first half of the main evening programme on weeknights at 6pm, the full late bulletins after News at Ten on weeknights, and sports news on Mondays and Fridays.^[14] On 5 September 2011, separate weekday daytime bulletins for the two sub-regions (at breakfast and lunchtime) were reintroduced.

In September 2013, ITV News West Country extended the opt-outs to at least 20 minutes of the 6pm programme, in addition to separate weekend bulletins, effectively restoring full services for the two areas.^[15] Both opt-outs use the same presenter(s) and studio in Bristol, therefore one of the two opt-outs – depending on the day's news – is pre-recorded 'as live' shortly before transmission.

Weather forecasts are pre-recorded and are localised for the West and South West opt-outs. They are produced and presented from Met Office headquarters in Exeter or studios in Bristol.