It really is the end of regional ITV as we know it (and I feel fine)

Buried in an article about ITV plc appointing its first ever executive in charge of all ITV1 regional news bulletins in England and Wales, the Media Guardian reveals that ITV1's regional news bulletins are expected to be rebranded to emphasise the ITV logo, and downplay the local franchise names.

Ever since regional idents were scrapped from idents in 2002, ITV plc has been gradually downplaying the old regional names - to such an extent that on regions like Tyne Tees, you'd be hard pressed to see a single Tyne Tees mention left bar the occurence of the odd production slide. Since the ITV News rebrand earlier this year, even regional news programmes have been introduced without even a hint of regionality on the ident.

But hanging on in there, news programmes like Granada Reports, HTV News and Meridian Tonight - the last remaining bastion of regionality. And in an increasingly homogonised world, they're increasingly sticking out like a sore thumb. After all, when you're station is called ITV1, why would you have a news programme for the north west of England called Granada Reports? Who is Granada? Well... now sadly, Granada is no one.

Quite what will happen to marginally regional names like Central News or Westcountry Live is another matter, but in theory even North East Tonight could be on the way out if the new bosses decide that everything should be something of the form "ITV News North East".