Fifty one jobs to be axed at Border TV
Last updated 13:38, Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Fifty one jobs will go at Carlisle's Border TV when the station is merged with Tyne Tees, it was announced this morning.
Staff were told in a meeting at the Harraby station that the workforce of 64 will be slashed to just 13 as part of the biggest ever shake-up of regional news programmes in Britain.
Four hundred and twenty nine jobs will go across the country.
NUJ representative Adam Powell said staff were “angry, disappointed, let down and frustrated”.
ITV will begin a statutory 30-day consultation period on the redundancies, starting on Thursday.
It is not yet clear whether the redundancies will be voluntary or compulsory.
Regulator Ofcom sounded the death knell for Border TV and its Lookaround news programme last week when it supported ITV’s proposals to merge Border’s news operation with Tyne Tees.
ITV announced that the new operation will employ 77 people in total: 57 in Gateshead, 13 in Carlisle and seven in Billingham, Teesside.
Of the 13 Carlisle posts, most will be based at satellite offices in places like Dumfries, Selkirk, Whitehaven and Kendal. The remainder will work in the Harraby studio.
As someone who lives in the Border - Granada overlap area I have to say I wish we were being absorbed into the Granada region, so much more professional, they serve south Cumbria really well, better than Tyne Tees will ever serve the rest of the county!!
Border has had its day in my opinion, im not interested in whats going on in Dumfries or the Scottish parliament, but to replace it with Tyne Tees is pure stupidity! We are in the North West not the North East!!!
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Have your say
After watching tynetees border for the past 6 weeksiut is absolute rubbish. We get next to no scottish borders news at all and honestly what is happening in tyne tees is of no interest to me whatsoever.
We in the scottish borders would be far better linked to S.T.V. from Glasgow.
Also where has Adam Powell and Jonathan Willoughby disappeared to they were 2 of the best presenters on Border.
Posted by mrs freda wright on 1 April 2009 kl. 18:26