BBC Network news - no longer relevant for the nations?

I think the prospect of extra regions for the BBC is a little unlikely at the moment. With BBC London announcing 10% job cuts, the suspension (and possibly the end) of Inside Out and weekly politics programmes there isn't much scope for new services.

Also the review of BBC England will be published soon and some suspect that may lead to mergers of some areas. If there is any small chance of expansion it has already been made clear that the BBC consider the Midlands and North underserved. Expansion there would likely be at the expense of the South.

Welcome back Newsroom SouthEast!

Hmm. Maybe BBC Midlands could open a studio at Nottingham and subsume the North Midlands.I sense Lincolnshire being taken over by BBC East Anglia and East Yorkshire being reunited with the rest of the county.
Bye Bye Levy.

Never going to happen for as long as terrestrial television is still a thing.

Hmm. I don’t really buy that the Midlands and North are particularly hard done by. Both have had what were previously sub-regions (Nottingham and Hull) develop into full regions. Some might argue that Hull is over-served.

The scaling back of English regional output (Inside Out and Politics) has been received significant backlash, and it’s hard to see they would permanently pull the last remaining regional current affairs programmes while also arguing for the retention of the licence fee.

I think the BBC England review is more likely to affect local radio. Merging of afternoon/weekend programmes seems most likely. With possible reintroduction of opt-out breakfast shows in places like Peterborough to fulfil the remit of going ‘more local’ at times.

Can’t see an Isle of Man or City of London TV sub-opt happening in the current climate (or at all). Just my 2p.

That is what they proposed for Local Radio after DFQ and it was so universally unpopular that it didn't happen apart from the evening show, and that has been reversed.

Now it's a different time, the policy is very much for local radio and its being promoted and repositioned. This year of any year its proved it's worth, both with covid and with some stations in the Midlands had barely finished flood programming when that started!

It's also much cheaper now, all the stations have been virtualised (all the back end equipment is shared in central locations) so moving to smaller cheaper premises has become possible. Covid home working has probably reduced the size of premises needed even more


Long term similar will happen to regional TV too, most are long overdue a refit and it will all lost certainly be something IP based and cheaper in terms of premises and technology

BBC London used to do this a lot too, just because a film is premiering in London doesn't mean its relevant (unless the film is about something that happened in London). What didn't help there was that the BBC put in a plug in point in Leicester Square (amongst other locations) and I think they felt the need to make use of it

It's worth noting that significant schedule changes to local radio were made a few months ago, with Covid-19 being cited as the reason for the changes. I suspect that some of theses changes may become permanent, or at least they won't fully return to their previous schedules and will feature fewer presenters/programmes to reduce costs. It also wouldn't surprise me if the current 10pm 'lates' slot becomes a regional rather than a county based programme.

They already are regional in most areas, and have been so for many years - I think maybe one or two stations in the north might have their own late shows (it's hard to tell from the current schedules). Most areas have their own evening shows, however, which were introduced in 2018 after the demise of the national evening show. These have mostly been retained since the start of the crisis, although the Yorkshire stations appear to have merged theirs - but I think this is the most likely time of day to be affected if cuts are made.

The standardised schedule is likely to stay into 2021, and I have seen rumours that it may indeed be made permanent. I think 4 hour shows are too long, and when normality returns I think 3 hour shows in weekday daytime would be preferable, while weekends should be more flexible to allow space for the specialist programmes and presenters that have mostly disappeared under the current arrangement.

Personally I'd find 6am-7pm being local and early breakfast and 7pm-1am being regional fairly acceptable.

I do feel that dropping the local evening shows, which in many cases have been used to attract a younger audience, or to increase the level of specialist content serving subgroups of the local population, on a station would be a mistake. There is almost certainly an argument that mid mornings would be the least worst time to go regional as the content between stations is essentially the same during this part of the day and there isn't really a need for localised information during these hours.

In my area the BBC local radio station is only local from 6-10am, and then is effectively regional for the rest of the day. Meanwhile the television regional news service is a programme about London. Yet we face having local services cut back so the north can have a better service.

Some of the specialist shows could benefit from going regional. The indie music show Stereo Underground - which goes out from Solent to stations in the south - seems to have built a decent Saturday night following during lockdown, although rather oddly it now goes up against Gary Crowley's similar show on Radio London.