NRegan

Last updated at 01:00, Friday, 19 October 2007

FOR YEARS, they’ve been the public face of Border TV's popular nightly news show Lookaround.

You’d be hard pressed to find anybody in Cumbria, the Isle of Man, and south west Scotland who couldn’t instantly recognise Fiona Armstrong and Tim Backshall.

Time after time, they’ve been in the frontline of the region’s TV news gathering, covering dramas such as the foot and mouth crisis of 2001, the Carlisle floods of 2005, and the Grayrigg train derailment in February this year.

In a curious twist the two presenters, and their colleagues at Lookaround, have found themselves the centre the news after ITV chiefs unveiled a plan to cut £40 million from its regional news budget.

ITV chairman Michael Grade says the plan – to axe nine of the network’s 17 flagship news programmes, including Lookaround – is being driven by commercial realities. The company is spending too much on regional news, he argues.

ITV bosses say they will create a new regional news service; 10 minutes of news from the Border region would be slotted into a new 30 minute programme that will cover the Tyne Tees area too. Lookaround staff fear it will be based at studios in Gateshead.

They are worried that news in parts of Cumbria and the Borders would not be covered.

In a rare interview, the pair made an impassioned plea for the future of Lookaround, arguing that it has a unique place in Cumbrian life.

“We understand the harsh commercial realities, but we feel that there’s a unique case to be made for Lookaround,” said Fiona.

“There’s only so much news you can fit into a half-hour programme, and the fear is that the Border region would not be covered in as much depth and people here would be marginalised.

“The resources available to the BBC, which has just announced a round of 3,000 redundancies, means that it can’t cover Cumbria adequately and certainly not in the way that we do.”

Fiona spoke of the uniquely rural quality of much of Lookaround’s coverage – the kind of story that is unlikely to be a priority for any of the bigger news centres .

Recalling her days as a journalist with ITN in London, she said: “In London, I was covering national stories such as the IRA bombings, the Zebrugge ferry disaster, and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher.

“When I came back to Cumbria, I was presenting stories about problems with giant hogweed on the banks of the River Nith, or Ambleside sports day. I realised that local news is so incredibly important.

“I’ve been here for 23 years on and off, and we don’t have the hard news emphasis that you get in places like Newcastle. People here know when they sit down to watch Lookaround that there’s a chance that their flower show, or their dog show will be on the television.”

Fiona and Tim feel passionately that Lookaround is more than just a local news programme – it’s a public service.

“It’s worked well for 46 years and it just seems so sad to talk about dismantling it.”

Tim, who has worked on the show for 10 years, said: “People see us as part of their families. They feel an affinity to the Border region and there’s a strong sense of identity. Lookaround is an important part of that – it’s the voice of the region. Our region is so far away from the other ITV regional news centres that if it were to be centralised there’s a danger that voice may be lost.

“This is a unique area and there’s a sense of tradition and history.”

Lookaround has consistently had the best percentage viewing figures for any ITV regional news programme, at around 40 per cent of the audience share.

Fiona said: “We’ve had amazing support from all sorts of people – from staff in the local sandwich shop to people who we meet on jobs; and also from local politicians.”

One key argument in Lookaround’s favour is that its news patch is one of only two areas among those under the spotlight that will be left without a full half-hour regional ITV news programme.

In other areas, county-based news programmes will merge. In Cumbria, the fear is that local news will slip to the bottom of the ITV regional news agenda.

Tim and Fiona agreed that ITV bosses are being open and as positive as they can be about the future, but they are determined that the case for Lookaround should be heard.

They also believe such a popular programme may well be commercially viable: a jewel in the ITV regional news crown. “It isn’t broke, so we’re not planning to fix it,” was reportedly how one senior ITV executive recently summed up the station to its staff during a visit.

Tim and Fiona have spoken out and they can only pray that one day soon ITV chiefs will heed the wishes of so many Cumbrians and that they will be telling the story of how the battle for the show they love has finally been won.

First published at 16:47, Thursday, 24 January 2008
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk