It has been announced this week that the Westcountry  is no longer to have a local independent TV service dedicated solely to the South West peninsula. Martin Hesp looks back at nearly half a century of commercial TV in the region

A WELL-known and much-loved pillar of the local community passed peacefully away this week. Regional independent television news was pronounced dead on Tuesday and will finally be laid to rest at the year's end.

Throughout its life, and in its several guises, the local TV news provided an unstinting, vigorous, diligent and often entertaining service to the towns, villages and remote communities of the Westcountry.

Christened Westward Television on April 29, 1961, the regional service would, 20 years later, change its name to Television South West – TSW – which, a decade after, was bought by an independent company called Westcountry, which was in turn bought by Carlton TV. Carlton Westcountry then became ITV Westcountry, that being the sorry name it will take to the grave.

As a purely local service concentrating on the highs and lows, ups, downs, joys, tears, tragedies, successes, commerce, trade, weather, sport, education, environment and general life-blood of this peninsula, it will be sorely missed.

"I think it's tragic and wicked," says Judy Spiers, who began working at Westward as an announcer in the late 1970s and continued through to the TSW days of the late '80s. "There's a great tradition of regional TV and it's a far bigger loss than members of public can ever understand.

"For a start, it's the place where people cut their teeth in television. There's the friendly atmosphere – people looked out for each other – and because we were a local station run by people from the area, that somehow came out in what we did. There is great audience affection – which doesn't happen in other parts of the country."

Like all births, the dawn of local independent TV began with much hope and promise – and, like all deaths, it has passed away after a period that has witnessed a general sense of departure and a reduction in activity. On that April birth-night in 1961 there was a region-wide hush and excitement as flickering glass screens, from Taunton to Truro and beyond, shimmered with the first commercial TV pictures from the Westcountry for the Westcountry.

During the initial seconds we heard the jolly strains of a medley of classical music, but all we saw was a rather fuzzy-looking card naming the new transmitters from which Westward TV would be broadcast. Then suddenly there was living, moving TV – not very exciting, but a moving vertical view of one the giant transmitter masts.

Then, for the next four minutes, we were treated to a medley of quintessential Westcountry images to go with the bouncy music. There were the Plymouth docks with caravanners going off on a ferry, there were surfers, Cornish tin mines, china clay works, Devonshire harvest scenes, the modern M5, a steam train almost – but not quite – from another age, primeval Tarr Steps, ancient Allerford packhorse bridge, a thatched cottage, some aged-looking Brixham trawlers, be-capped men mending nets, and people playing bowls, Drake-like on Plymouth Sound.

This first dawn of a new communication age ended with a map of the Westcountry highlighting what happens to be this newspaper's exact area of coverage – the Isles of Scilly, all of Devon and Cornwall and the western halves of Somerset and Dorset. At the end we were treated to Westward TV's logo – a silver model of the Golden Hind spinning slowly and confidently on a plinth.

Within three years Westward could boast more than 100 correspondents rushing about with film cameramen from Weymouth to St Just, gathering news. The original flagship was the magazine-style Westward Diary, at first broadcast three times a week with presenters Barry Westwood, Reginald Bosanquet and Kenneth MacLeod taking it in turns. Local news was aired in a separate bulletin – Westward News – on week-nights between 6.05pm and 6.15pm.

The two were soon brought together to form a "regional news magazine". And, like a magazine, the show contained all manner of non-newsy features.

Various experts became regular fixtures – Topline Broadhurst was the station's gardening man, Ted Tuckerman went fishing in a feature called Tight Lines, zoologist Jon Miller presented an environmental series, and architect David Young looked at local buildings. There were other regular slots – many viewers over a certain age will recall Picture Puzzle – a popular and now old-fashioned feature in which you had to guess the location in a photograph. The weather was delivered by Graham Danton who went on to present several programmes including Holiday Times and the Late With Danton consumer programme.

The Independent Broadcasting Authority told Westward that it would have to provide at least six- and-a-half hours of regional programming a week, and we were treated to all manner of documentaries and shows. Some of these may not have been Palme d'Or award quality, but they were spawned here in the Westcountry and were, for the most part, about it.

There were local pop-based programmes – Spin Along, with Alan "Fluff" Freeman – and Move Over Dad – which saw the Beatles being smuggled into the Plymouth studios through a tunnel in November 1963. They recorded an interview with Stuart Hutchison while the station's Derry's Cross headquarters was besieged by fans.

A few Westward staff became nationally known but it's names like Clive Gunnell and the WMN's Ron Bendell that really warm the hearts of many viewers when they think of local TV.

Westward Diary reporter Clive Gunnell came to fame by walking, back in 1973, the new South West Coast Path. Clive had five series under his belt before he even reached the south coast. But Walking Westward was aired across the ITV network. Later, Clive's documentary To Tavistock Goosie Fair won Most Outstanding Regional Production of 1977.

Viewers will recall a puppet rabbit, Gus Honeybun, one of the most celebrated characters regional TV has produced – he was, of course, found wandering about lost on Dartmoor by Westward's outside broadcast unit, so the story goes.

Eventually Westward lost its franchise, and was sold to TSW in 1981 for £2.38 million. The deal included staff, premises and the programme library. On December 31 that year at two minutes to midnight, presenter Roger Shaw made Westward TV's last announcement, ending with Samuel Johnson's words: "New things are made familiar and familiar things are new…"

David FitzGerald – who now hosts BBC Radio Devon's Saturday morning programme – was a newsreader and anchorman during the TSW days. He told the WMN he was saddened to see the demise of regional independent broadcasting. "It seems to follow the trend that anyone outside Devon and Cornwall thinks the South West starts and ends at Bristol," he commented. "It's not fair – especially not fair to the Cornish."

A decade after TSW took over the franchise, change was happening again. Presenters Ruth Langsford and Ian Stirling were looking rather sad on screen during the 1991-92 New Year celebrations and doing their double act. "Well now we come to the moment itself," they quivered. "If we could all choose a TV area where we'd really like to work, it would be here."

With that they toasted the camera with champagne, a few fireworks flickered across the screen, and a voice said: "Happy New Year and welcome to Westcountry, your new ITV station from the South West. We look forward to bringing you a new kind of regional television service…

"Up-to-the minute news coverage throughout the day, seven days a week. Weekdays at six Katie Haswell, David Foster and Ron Bendell head an expert team in a unique mix of local news and topical features covering the ups and downs of local life in Westcountry Live…"

One man who worked for all the franchise holders is Roger Charlesworth, who started as a film editor in 1961 and eventually retired from ITV Westcountry in 2002 after 41 years' service.

"How they can justify not giving the viewers the service they've had for all those years?" he asks. "Just 15 minutes a day inserted into programmes from Bristol – I cannot understand the logic of it.

"Westward in particular was a very special company to work for. When we lost the franchise, I set about organising a regular reunion of previous staff and we've just had our eighth where 180 people came along – and we are talking about a company that lost its franchise 15 years ago."

Harry Turner was chief executive at TSW. He said: "I am devastated by the closure – the whole strength and raison d'être was to provide regional broadcasting with public service ethic. That's why the companies were given monopolies – so they could earn a decent living and not have competition – and it worked.

"We won Emmy awards and made wonderful programmes that reflected the region in which we lived – and all that is going down the tubes because of reforms that took place many years ago. When the great auction (of TV franchises) came up the whole concept of public service was lost and replaced by the pursuit of money and ratings.

"The whole thing is a disaster – and a lot of it is down to the arrogance of those in the centre. We sold our own advertising and kept the money and spent it on our programmes – we were very profitable. You raised you own money and paid your own way."

It is a sad way to end after such promise and such hope. What people love is the localness. Viewers can see London, Hollywood and goodness knows where else on TV at any time – what they don't get to see too often is their own backyard.

And that's what independent regional TV in the South West has been about for nearly half a century; focusing on, and helping to celebrate, what must be one of the most beautiful and interesting backyards anywhere.