The ONE Show: daytime TV in the evening
First, it's not the new Nationwide. Yes, it's a live, early-evening regional news magazine show, bracketed by the actual news, on BBC1, but it's new, not Nationwide. This is what they'd have us believe anyway, and comparisons will always be odious. When Nationwide went live in 1969 it was part of a restructuring of BBC's news output (the Early Evening News went from just ten minutes long to 20 minutes at the same time), and its regional bias was radical and, in many cases, just beyond the technical capabilities of the time. The programme stayed black and white for two years after the rest of the network had gone colour, because not all local BBC stations were geared up for the changeover. However, once it had found its stride in the 70s, anchored not just by the man who spoke its first words, Michael Barratt, but also Bob Wellings and later Frank Bough and Sue Lawley, Nationwide gripped the nation to the tune of 11-12 million viewers, with its mix of hard, often consumer-based news, authored reports from the regions and "lighter" items (its skateboarding duck story still dogs the programme's very name). I remember it well from my youth. I had a particular liking for Tom Coyne - anybody remember where he reported from? I know a lot more about Nationwide's genesis thanks to a terrific article by Ian Jones on Off The Telly, which can be found here.

I was reading up on Nationwide, which ended in 1983, because I was called in to review new incarnation, The ONE Show by Radio 4's Front Row this evening.

It went out not at the old time of 6pm, but at 6.55pm, anchored by Adrian Chiles - whom surely not a man or woman in this land can dislike - and Nadia Sawalha, who described herself as the "wacky" to his "wonderful" in the opening preamble, which is worrying. Far from the sober, deskbound Nationwide (I'll try not to mention it again), which Barratt introduced in 1969 with the promise of "the facts, the people and the background of the country we live in," The ONE Show is set in the now-statutory open-plan studio with the real world seen outside the huge picture window behind the presenters - in this case, attractive canalside development in Birmingham, This Morning-style. There is also the standard-issue low, frosted-glass coffee table with logo etched into it. It's significant that the show was launched in late summer, as it means that bright sunlight floods in, making it seem even more like daytime TV in the evening. Gravitas is nowhere in evidence. Nationwide covered the resignation of Ted Heath in 1975, live. Would The ONE Show (I hate those capitals) do the same if David Cameron resigned between 6.55 and 7.25? (Answer: it wouldn't happen - politicians resign in time for the news these days.)

For a programme whose modus operandi is regionality, and which begins with a computer-animated map of Britain, it was an own goal to have no report from further north than Birmingham: a live interview (with delay) from Pontypool with the new Doctor Who companion, who's having the time of her life and "living a dream"; a hard-hitting hidden-camera investigation into our lack of manners on a train to Milton Keynes, which prompted the inevitable phone-vote (if someone took their socks off in a train carriage, would you a) confront them, or b) say nothing? - phone or text now); Kate Humble topping and tailing a pre-edited film about red deer in Exmoor; back to Brum for a crunching gear-change and an in-studio interview with David Oakley, the drugs-trial unfortunate who now has cancer; and finally, a quick word with Dan Snow in Dover to flag up his report from Dover tomorrow. It was all over very quickly. Nadia said they were going to "poke around" in "every nook and cranny" of this country, which they didn't, but we must give it a week.

Unlike Nationwide (oops), which made TV stars of regional footsoldiers like Stuart Hall, Hugh Scully, Sue Lawley, John Stapleton and later Des Lynham, The ONE Show risks nothing and starts with well-established names, like Humble and Snow and, on tomorrow's programme, Charlie Dimmock. This suggests a different approach, one more attuned to the celebrity culture we now live in, and one less about the regions. After all, Humble's not from Exmoor, Snow isn't from Dover, they're merely roving reporters, reporting from wherever the story is. Then again, it's not the new Nationwide. It's a light magazine show, low on news, high on ... what? Lawley described the original as being like a "local paper". This is much more like a local paper. Give it time to bed in. The important thing is that the March of Chiles continues unabated, and for that we must be truly thankful.

Oh, and the result of the phone vote? 49 per cent said they would confront, 51 per cent said they would say nothing. An attempt to break this down regionally was half-hearted. I think 86 per cent would confront in the South West. Or was it say nothing?