South at Six

South Today has the unenviable task of trying to fill 30 minutes with the days events in the south region of England, which often is very little. Much of the 'news' reports are merely pre-empting - "next week a **** exhibition will open," "there will be a commemorative event about **** tomorrow," "what is going on this weekend" etc. and so the "Today" part of the title is downright misleading. I suppose I would prefer this to drive-by shootings and terrorist attacks in my area, but there really is not enough material to engage the viewers for even the whole half hour. I suspect that many like me simply use the programme as background noise for during cooking in the evening. It could easily be cut to 10 minutes and nothing important would be missed.

A lot of the presenting comes across as almost unprofessional, with Sally Taylor and Roger Johnson seemingly doing their best to fill as much of the programme as possible with their supposedly hilarious banter, made all the more inane by their laughing like hyenas at their own rubbish jokes. To be fair it does not help when a significant proportion of the outside broadcasts have the sound or picture failing so that they have to do something to cover the gap. Of all the presenters only Dani Sinha really comes across well as a serious newsreader and does a creditable job.

Another positive is that at least it manages to repeat itself less than Breakfast News which will happily repeat no news every couple of minutes for several hours. The programme is just another symptom of our apparent need to have the news immediately and constantly available no matter how little there is.