ITV Thames Valley

ITV Thames Valley was a non-franchise ITV news region covering the Thames Valley area of the United Kingdom from 4 December 2006 until 8 February 2009. Owned and operated by ITV plc, it served the south/south-eastern area of the legal Central franchise and the north/north-western area of the legal Meridian franchise. In its first year, its flagship news programme Thames Valley Tonight won the Royal Television Society's Southern Centre Award for News Magazine Programme of the Year for its coverage of the 2007 summer floods.

The service began broadcasting 4 December 2006 merging the news assets of the two former sub-regions, and its newsrooms were officially opened on 26 January 2007 by ITV executive chairman, Michael Grade.

Initially, ITV Thames Valley was to be launched on 4 November 2006. However, due to transmitter realignment, the date was finally set to 4 December; four weeks later than planned. It was expected the merging of the two sub-regions was originally expected to make over 40 workers redundant in editorial and production positions in Central South due to the favouring of Meridian's Whiteley base for production. However this number was reduced to around 10 by re-organisation of staffing roles. Central South's old newsroom at Abingdon was retained as the main newsgathering base for ITV Thames Valley.

The launch was successful in ratings terms. Although initially, ITV Thames Valley's flagship news programme, Thames Valley Tonight, received some minor criticism by viewers due to its lack of locality of news items in some areas due to the much larger geographical coverage area compared to its sub-regional predecessors.

Central and Meridian are both owned by ITV plc, which holds all the ITV franchise licences in England and Wales, so this change amounts simply to an internal organisation. Meridian classed the ITV Thames Valley service as "a third semi-independent sub-region for the Thames Valley", and stated its headquarters were in Abingdon. The service was known to be branded as both "ITV Thames Valley" and also "Meridian Thames Valley".

In June 2007, ITV plc executive chairman Michael Grade hinted at a possible re-structure of the ITV regional layout, stating the existence of smaller regional services "no longer makes sense" relative to the regional audience they serve.

The move was expected to give ITV plc "greater value for money", however would be subject to Ofcom approval.

The plan was confirmed in September 2007, and would reduce the number of regional news programmes from 17 to just 9 in early 2009, saving around £35 to £40 million each year. Under these proposals, all sub-regions, including Thames Valley, were axed for larger regions only. ITV Thames Valley's service merged with Meridian, enabling a single live regional news programme to cover the whole of the Meridian franchise area (including the ex-Central part of the ITV Thames Valley patch), with recorded opt-outs for sub-regional news.