Grade one tinkering at ITV

It looks like Michael Grade is making his mark at ITV. BBC News reports that he plans to double spending on content to £1.2 billion by 2012, scrapping those awful late-night money-raking quiz “programmes” and merging some of ITV’s smaller regional news services. Getting rid of the quiz rip-offs has to be a good move (not because they are appalling programming by the way, but because “negative publicity… has seen call volumes drop to uneconomic levels”), but is merging the regions wise? Hasn’t regional identity been diluted enough as a result of corporate branding?