12 Facts About Westcountry Television

ITV West Country incorporating the former ITV Westcountry and ITV West regions was a non-franchise ITV regional station covering south west England.

Westcountry Television was one of two rival consortia bidding against the incumbent TSW when the ITV franchises were put to tender early in 1991.

On 16 October 1991, Westcountry Television was announced as the winner, bidding £7 million a year against TSW's bid of £16 million a year.

Subsequently, Westcountry Television was re-branded as Carlton Westcountry Television in September 1999, although only referred on screen as Carlton.

On 27 October 2002, Carlton Westcountry Television lost its regional identity, and became known as ITV1 Carlton prior to regional programmes only, while being known as ITV1 at all other times.

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ITV1 Westcountry Television was used for a time after this, although from 13 November 2006, the regional name was only verbally mentioned before any locally produced programming.

Westcountry Television was originally based at Brittany Ferries' offices in Millbay Docks, Plymouth with a view to constructing a purpose-built studio centre on the Plymouth waterfront.

Westcountry Television opted instead to convert an industrial unit at Langage Science Park in Plympton, which was backed up by a network of seven local newsrooms and studios in Torbay, Penzance, Truro, Exeter, Barnstaple, Weymouth and Taunton.

Up until early 2009, Westcountry Television ran four sub-regional services, each providing short opt-out bulletins for their area during the flagship news programme Westcountry Television Live and the late bulletin after News at Ten.

Westcountry Television was the first and only ITV company to produce four opt-outs for its region.

Between 1 January 1993 and 5 September 1999, Westcountry Television's presentation featured that of a large 'W' shape on a frosted screen over a background video of a nature scene.

In 1999 the ITC again commented that Westcountry Television provided a "regional service of generally high quality" and that overall its range of regional programmes was "wide and included some strong factual material", noting that one of its children's programmes had been supplied to the network.