 In its first year, its flagship news programme "Thames Valley Tonight" won the Royal Television Society's Southern Centre Award for News Magazine Programme of the Year for its coverage of the 2007 summer floods.The service began broadcasting 4 December 2006 merging the news assets of the two former sub-regions, and its newsrooms were officially opened on 26 January 2007 by ITV executive chairman, Michael Grade.It was operated by ITV plc, and the main news programme in the area was Thames Valley Tonight.