Previously, TVS's predecessors Southern Television had produced Day by Day for over 20 years alongside separate news bulletins for both sub-regions and Scene South East, a weekly magazine programme for the South East (supplemented in later years by Scene Midweek).

[2] TVS was also the first television station in Britain to have its own dedicated live-link news helicopter – an Aerospatiale Twin Squirrel equipped with remote control camera and facilities to receive live pictures beamed up to it from five Land Rover Discovery mobile up-link units.

In November 1986 the IBA raised specific criticisms about the content of the programme, which led to a new editor being appointed to help resolve the issues.

The South East edition of Coast to Coast was produced and broadcast originally from a small studio in Dover previously used by Southern Television and, by October 1982, from the purpose-built TVS Television Centre in Maidstone – a district newsroom was located in Brighton to cover East Sussex.

Debens went on to become the programme's longest serving main presenter, partnered on-screen by a number of co-anchors including Merrill Harries, Mike Fuller, Cheryl Armitage, Anna Maria Ashe and Liz Wickham.

The Maidstone news team covered a number of major news stories during the programme's 11 years on air including the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise, the construction of the Channel Tunnel, the IRA bombings of the Brighton Grand Hotel and the Royal Marines base in Deal, and the Great Storm of 1987.

Meanwhile, in the South East, Mike Debens and Liz Wickham presented a more retrospective programme featuring an invited studio audience.