Granada Reports


Granada Reports is the evening news programme produced by ITV Granada and broadcasting to North West England and the Isle of Man. It broadcasts for thirty minutes each Monday to Friday from 18:00, covering regional news stories, features, sport and weather. It is presented by Lucy Meacock or Tony Morris. Shorter bulletins air at other times.

Overview

Granada Reports is produced and broadcast from studios in the Orange Tower at MediaCityUK in Salford Quays – the first bulletin from Salford aired on Sunday 24 March 2013. Before this, the news service was based at Granada's studios in Quay Street, Manchester. Reporters are also based at newsrooms in the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool, Lancaster and on the Isle of Man. News staff were also based at offices in Blackburn and Chester until they were closed in 2005.
Prior to its launch in 1973, the nightly news programme had been known under several titles such as Northern Newscast, Scene at Six Thirty, Newsview and People and Places. On 20 September 1978 Joy Division made their television debut on by performing "Shadowplay" on the "What's On" segment of Granada Reports. In April 1986, most of Granada's regional news operation was relocated from Manchester to a computerised news centre at the former Traffic Office building in Liverpool's Albert Dock, eight years after the company had first established a news base in the city. The flagship evening programme returned to Manchester in 1992 with bulletins broadcast from the Albert Dock newsroom until 1998 – the studios were closed in July 2006.
Between 2 January 1990 and 28 September 2001, the main evening programme was known as Granada Tonight. Shorter bulletins aired as Granada News. Most bulletins now air under the joint branding of ITV News and Granada Reports with breakfast bulletins entitled Good Morning Granada.
The programme was unaffected by cutbacks to ITV regional news in early 2009. The only major change saw ITV Granada take over coverage of the Isle of Man from ITV Tyne Tees & Border on 16 July 2009.
On 27 September 2012, it was announced technical staff had been invited to volunteer for redundancy as part of national job losses affecting ITV News services. The timing coincided with production moving from Granada Studios to MediaCityUK.
Lucy Meacock and Tony Morris are main presenters of the programme since 1988 and 2003 respectively.
Since March 2020, due to the Coronavirus disease 2019, the format of two Presenters and a Sports Desk were both temporarily dropped in favour of alternating presenters in the studio; the latter returned to the programme on 6 July 2020.

Current notable on air team