Calendar

Calendar is a regional television news and current affairs programme, produced by ITV Yorkshire at its studios in Leeds, serving Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and parts of the North Midlands and North West Norfolk areas of England. The programme is usually broadcast at 18:00 every weeknight, with short Calendar News bulletins airing seven days a week.

District reporters and camera crews are based at newsrooms in Sheffield, Hull and Lincoln.

1968 to January 2007
Calendar first aired on the launch day of Yorkshire Television - Monday, 29 July 1968. Since its launch, the programme has been produced at YTV's main studios in Kirkstall Road, Leeds but since 1989, has been broadcast from a specially converted centre opposite the main site.

Upon gaining the Belmont transmitter in 1974 from Anglia Television, which served south Lincolnshire and north Norfolk, the programme developed a regional opt-out service for the area within the main programme. At the same time, Yorkshire Television (YTV) inherited the Anglia news offices in Grimsby and Hull and opened a further newsroom in Lincoln. For several years until the early 1980s, viewers served by the Belmont transmitter also received a localised weather forecast produced by the weather department at Anglia.

In 1977, YTV launched a six-week breakfast television experiment, Good Morning Calendar. Good Morning Calendar is credited as being the UK's first breakfast television programme, six years before the launch of TV-am. The programme ran concurrently with a similar Tyne Tees programme, Good Morning North for North East viewers.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Calendar's output consisted of a main evening programme alongside lunchtime and late night bulletins on weekdays; weekend bulletins were not introduced until the late 1980s. When ITV Schools programming was moved to Channel 4 in 1987 and daytime programming introduced to ITV, national ITN and regional bulletins were introduced at 09:25 and 11:00, along with a mid-afternoon bulletin. In the latter part of the 1980s, Calendar expanded its lunchtime bulletin into a half-hour magazine show, Calendar Lunchtime Live. The programme was scrapped in early 1988 but reintroduced for a short period during 2001.

On Monday, 24 September 1990, a third sub-regional opt-out for south Yorkshire and north Derbyshire was introduced - Calendar South from Sheffield initially aired at lunchtime and within the main 18:00 programme while Calendar East (Hull) aired in east Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North Norfolk and Calendar News was broadcast to the rest of the region (west and north Yorkshire). The separate East and South services continued until December 2006.

January 2007 to February 2009
On Monday, 8 January 2007, Calendar's main 18:00 programme was split into North and South editions for the region. All other bulletins (weekday and weekend lunchtime, weekday late, and weekend early evening) were pan-regional. The previous East and South regions were merged to form a larger South area.


 * Calendar North: (north, west, and south west Yorkshire; north Derbyshire)
 * Calendar South: (central and east Lincolnshire; east and south east Yorkshire; east Nottinghamshire; north Norfolk).

The regular presenters of the North edition were Duncan Wood and Christine Talbot; two other long-standing Calendar presenters, John Shires and Gaynor Barnes, became the main regular presenters of the South edition. Both editions of the programme were broadcast from ITV Yorkshire's Leeds studios.

January 2009 to present
Cutbacks in ITV regional news coverage in early 2009 meant that its seventeen regions would be cut down to nine to "save costs", and regional news programmes would become pan-regional. The final sub-regional editions of Calendar aired on Wednesday, 18 February 2009 with a new pan-regional programme launching the next day.

Short opt-outs are retained for the North and South sub-regions within the 18:00 programme and after News at Ten - either the North or South opt is pre-recorded depending on the day's news. Calendar North presenters Duncan Wood and Christine Talbot now present the new programme, with Calendar South presenters John Shires and Gaynor Barnes moving to sports coverage and GMTV bulletins respectively.

Calendar airs seven days a week:
 * Three short breakfast bulletins during Daybreak.
 * A lunchtime bulletin after the ITV News at 1:30, airing between 13:55 and 14:00.
 * The main half-hour evening edition of Calendar at 18:00.
 * A late sub-regional bulletin after ITV News at Ten, airing between 22:25 and 22:35.
 * Two early evening bulletins at the weekend: one on Saturday and one on Sunday.

As with many ITV regional news programmes, some areas of the YTV region overlap with neighbouring ITV regions. For instance; Newark is covered by both Calendar and Central Tonight; similarly, north Norfolk is covered by both Calendar and Anglia Tonight.

Presenters
Note: Gaynor Barnes is presenting in place of Christine Talbot who is on sick leave.

Correspondents
Note: Kate Walby is currently on maternity leave.

Former on air team

 * Christa Ackroyd (now with BBC Look North)
 * Zeinab Badawi (now with BBC World News)
 * Faye Barker (now with London Tonight and ITV News)
 * Jo Blythe (now with Granada Reports)
 * Fiona Dwyer


 * Michelle Gee
 * Carolyn Hodgson
 * Debbie Lindley (now with The Pulse)
 * Mike Morris (now with Network Films)
 * Vicky Locklin (now with Radio One Mallorca in Majorca)


 * Karen Petch
 * Rachel Townsend (now with Granada Reports)
 * Bob Warman (now with Central Tonight)
 * Richard Whiteley (deceased)
 * Sara Willett