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.

Although initially, ITV Thames Valley's flagship news programme, Thames Valley Tonight, received some minor criticism by viewers due to its lack of locality of news items in some areas due to the much larger geographical coverage area compared to its sub-regional predecessors.

[9] The plan was confirmed in September 2007, and would reduce the number of regional news programmes from 17 to just 9 in early 2009, saving around £35 to £40 million each year.

ITV Thames Valley's service merged with Meridian, enabling a single live regional news programme to cover the whole of the Meridian franchise area (including the ex-Central part of the ITV Thames Valley patch), with recorded opt-outs for sub-regional news.

[12] However, the DTT coverage of Multiplex 2 from the transmitter (which contains the regional ITV service), will not be altered to accommodate these changes, and will solely broadcast the West subregion of Central.

All programming for the ITV Thames Valley region was produced from Meridian's Whiteley studios, with Central South's Abingdon base retained as a newsgathering centre only.

Following a selection process involving Central South and Meridian West staff, Robin Britton was appointed Head of News for ITV Thames Valley.