BBC North West Tonight

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North West Tonight
North West Tonight titles (September 2007-)
Format	Regional News
Presented by	Gordon Burns and Ranvir Singh
Slogan	Live News, Local News, Your News
Production
Producer(s)	BBC North West
Running time	Main bulletin: 30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC One North West
Original run	3 September 1993 – present

BBC North West Tonight is the news programme for the BBC North West English region. Produced by BBC North West, it broadcasts at 6.30pm every weeknight and also at 10:25pm during the BBC Ten O'Clock News and at the weekend. There are also breakfast, lunchtime and mid-afternoon bulletins on weekdays, known as North West Today.

1 BBC North West region
2 Presenters
3 Current Presenters
4 Former presenters
5 September 2007 Relaunch
6 BBC North West Today weather game
7 External links
- 7.1 Video clips

The North West region comprises Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cheshire, South Cumbria and North West Derbyshire. The programme also serves the Isle of Man. Transmitters in the extremes of West Yorkshire, covering towns like Todmorden broadcast this regional version but broadcast the ITV Yorkshire news show, Calendar. The programme can be watched in any part of the UK (and Europe) on digital satellite channel 978 on the BBC UK regional TV on satellite service.

For a few years in the late 1980s, North West Tonight covered the whole of Cumbria but after campaigning by viewers, the area was returned to a reformed BBC North East and Cumbria region.

North West Tonight broadcasts on BBC One from its studio at the New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester. The equivalent daytime news bulletins are transmitted as North West Today. The programme began as Look North, but was changed to Look North West in 1980 with News Northwest introduced for shorter bulletins in 1981. Then, on September 3 1984, North West Tonight began. The new corporate BBC ident started on September 16, 2002. The main signal for the programme comes from the Winter Hill transmitter near Horwich.

Current presenters include Gordon Burns. Burns was previously best known as presenter of ITV game show The Krypton Factor, although he did start as a local evening presenter for UTV, then Granada Television in the 1970s. When he joined the programme in 1997, it apparently experienced a large increase in ratings, becoming more popular than ITV's rival Granada Reports. North West Tonight now has ratings of around 600,000 for the 6:30 bulletin and is the BBC's most watched regional news programme.

Jane Cheater or Carol Lowe

Gordon Burns or Carol Lowe/Naomi Cornwell

Gordon Burns and Ranvir Singh

Annabel Tiffin or Ranvir Singh

Mark Edwardson

Dianne Oxberry (6.30 After BBC 6 'o' clock news - North West Tonight)
Heather Stott (1.30 After BBC 1 'o' clock news - North West Today and stand-in for 6.30 broadcast)
Jane Cheater (Stand-in)

Former presenters include Stuart Hall, John Mundy, Martin Henfield, David Davies and Philip Hayton. Stuart Hall left in 1990, though can be heard often on BBC Radio Manchester waxing lyrical about Manchester City and he appears on Greater Manchester's local television station, Channel M, presenting the segment Hall's Heroes on Channel M News.

The programme was relaunched on Monday 10th September 2007. Ranvir Singh joined Gordon Burns as co-presenter on the main evening edition and a new set was revealed along with new titles and on-screen graphics. The webcam view of Oxford Road which was shown on a large screen ('window') behind Gordon since 2000 did not feature in the new set.

North West Tonight now uses it own in-house title sequences and graphics featuring images from across the region, Town and City names and 'data streams' flowing throughout the North West and resolving on a map of the region, which symbolises this web of News.

Coinciding with the relaunch, Gordon launched a newsletter which viewers can subscribe to receive by email.

Every weekday, the presenter of the lunchtime BBC North West Today (usually Gordon Burns) played a word game with the weather presenter standing next to his desk. The weather presenter at lunchtime was usually Nichola Dixon, who presented her report and included in it a secret word. The secret word was an anagram of the first letters of placenames shown on the map. After the report finished, Gordon Burns had to guess what the word was. The weather game was said to increase interest in watching the local weather. It has not been continued since Dixon's departure from the show.