{"id":40,"date":"2009-06-10T16:23:09","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T15:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2011-08-31T11:31:36","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T10:31:36","slug":"no-more-westcountry-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/2009\/06\/no-more-westcountry-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"No More Westcountry TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"westcountry-badge_small\"I found out by chance the other day that ITV have shut down<\/a> Westcountry TV and made most of the staff redundant.<\/p>\n

I worked at Westcountry TV from 1990-1993, straight after University. It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had and I’m rather sorry to see the old company disappear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia gives a good potted history<\/a> of the station, which underwent quite a few acquisitions over the year – although when I was there it was under the original small company that won the ITV franchise. My bosses were Ray and Sim Harris<\/a><\/p>\n

The company had made a commitment to local news in the franchise award, which meant I had the good fortune to be based in Exeter for my 3 years. Since there is now only one ITV Plc, I\u00a0 guess these commitments have been thrown out of the window now – there’s is apparently no way ITV can be run as franchises with all the benefits of competition this entailed.<\/p>\n

\"Westcountry<\/a>
Westcountry TV - Exeter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The team in Exeter was small, just 4 of us most of the time, and we really felt we were our own little TV station – we put out our own little 2 1\/2 minute “opt-out” from the main local 6pm news, broadcast live from the Exeter Arts Centre where our offices were based.
\nSteve ‘Buckets<\/a>‘ Jennings, David Whitbourn<\/a>, Broni Lloyd-Edwards<\/a> and Sarah Windsor (from Barnstable<\/a> as was made clear) were my first set of co-habitees in Exeter and we had a fantastic time there (when not being ordered about by the big bosses up in Plymouth!). Steve in particular was a mentor to me. His humour, intelligence and technical skills, along with unstinting kindness taught me so much in those 3 years.<\/p>\n

After 3 years I was ready for a change, and drove off to France in my lovely old Triumph Spitfire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found out by chance the other day that ITV have shut down Westcountry TV and made most of the staff redundant. I worked at Westcountry TV from 1990-1993, straight after University. It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had and I’m rather sorry to see the old company disappear. Wikipedia gives a … Continue reading “No More Westcountry TV”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","tag-westcountry-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wickham.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}