Thames Valley Tonight
| Thames Valley Tonight | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Also known as | 'Thames Valley Today' |
| Genre | Regional News |
| Starring |
Mary Green Wesley Smith |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | ITV Thames Valley (Meridian / Central) |
| Release | |
| Original network |
Central (South), Meridian (West) |
| Original release | 4 December 2006 – 8 February 2009 |
Thames Valley Tonight was a regional news programme broadcast to part of the ITV Network in the Thames Valley area of southern England. The Thames Valley news region was launched on Monday 4 December 2006 and ceased to exist on 8 February 2009.
Like all regional news programmes on ITV in England and Wales and ITV Channel Television, it used the generic ITV font and idents.
The region was created by a merger between Meridian West and Central South's regional news services, and broadcast to the Meridian West sub-region from the Hannington transmitter, and the Central South sub-region from the Oxford transmitter. The Thames Valley operation covered Berkshire, Buckinghamshire (west including Aylesbury), Hampshire (north of and including Winchester), Oxfordshire, Surrey (west and including Camberley) and Wiltshire (east and including Swindon). In all the population of the patch was around 3 million people.
The main presenters were Mary Green and Wesley Smith (with Hannah Shellswell co-presenting with Smith on Fridays). Chris Maughan, Victoria Bennett and David Reilly presented the Sports News, either in the studio or from the newsroom. While the newsgathering arm of the operation was based at the old Central South location at Abingdon in Oxfordshire, the presentation studio (formerly used for Meridian West) was based at Meridian's headquarters in Whiteley, Hampshire. Bureaux offices were located at Swindon, Reading and Westminster. The view projected on to the screen behind the newsreaders was of the Oracle Shopping Centre in Reading, chosen presumably as the town lay in the heart of the new region - previously it sat in an overlap of the now replaced Central South and Meridian West sub-regions - therefore avoiding accusations of favouritism towards one side or the other.
In just over two years on air, Thames Valley Tonight won a number of awards, including the RTS Southern Centre 'Programme of the Year' Award in 2007 for coverage of the summer floods and the 2008 EDF News Programme of the Year Award for its coverage of the opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.
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