Difficulties over the extent to which ITN relies upon ITV's network of regional newsrooms to provide journalism for its national news bulletins has caused problems in talks about regional news partnerships between the BBC and ITV.

The partnerships would see the BBC and ITV share newsroom and studio facilities, and pool picture and video resources, saving £1.5m by 2011 and £7m per year by 2016. A memorandum of understanding between the two broadcasters was signed in March.

According to The Guardian, the BBC is concerned that the pooling of picture resources could result in BBC-supported images and video being used on ITN's competing national news bulletins because of its reliance on ITV's regional news network. The paper also reported that ITV is undecided about whether to pilot the arrangements because any savings would take a long time to materialise.