The ITV local channels all have their own webpages, which are linked to from the main ITV website.
When you click into each region, the regions' page opens in a new window and the video player starts playing the most recent news bulletin automatically.
The regions' pages all look almost identical, but the various sections differ slightly from region to region eg. Westcountry has a link to a live webcam at Fistral beach. ITV Wales currently has a section called ITVWales @ 50
Every region does seem to have the same few core sections however, eg. Local news; Travel News; Weather; Sport; Grassroots Sport among others.
Quite a lot of the video content on the local pages seems to have been made specifically for the website, eg. the weather report - the presenter says "welcome to the weather report on ITVLocal" or "...ITVLocal.com"; or entertainment interviews presented as being for ITVLocal rather than a specific area.
A lot -but not all of the ITVLocal pages have a Go Local section, with a map, on the right-hand side of the page where you can link through to ultra-local news.
I like the fact that each of the ITV regions has so much on its local pages, because often it seems like national news is all that the big broadcasters really want to focus on.
The extra, just-for-the-web content gives the viewer a lot more choice. On the ITV Wales page I found an interview with Trinny and Susannah which stretched to almost 8 minutes. There's no way local TV news would ever have time for that sort of item, so it's good that viewers can get this kind of variety on the website.
The ultra-local content reflects the growing trend for ultra-local sections in the main TV regional news and keeps some continuity between the two media.
The fact that some regions have different sections gives a feeling of variety.
Overall, in some ways the ITVLocal content has a lot more in it than I would have expected, and has quite a nice feel to it, with a lot of variety.
It does however still have some of the cheap feel to it that local news has always had, which is a shame. I guess local content just doesn't get the budget to make it any glossier, but I wonder if this will change with the rise of ever more local news? So many people complain that national news is too London-centric that I think the audience might appreciate a shift to more investment in local news. At the moment the channel bosses just don't seem to be taking things that way...
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I think more will be invested into internet tv as ITV Westcountry merges with Bristol to cover the whole region. It's a shame that the local news we see on ITV will be streamlined and we won't be getting the feature side of local news i.e the wildlife packages by Jo Cole on Westcountry.
This is where perhaps internet TV will have such features online as opposed to the main programme. Of course the decision by OFCOM regarding the future of ITV Westcountry hasn't been made yet, but no doubt local ITV news will not be the same in a few months time to what we are seeing now on TV.
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