BBC News: Nations & Regions

Agreed - it seems like a very daft idea

Last I heard BBC 2W was going to be scrapped come DSO. I remember Welsh viewers weren't happy when 2W weren't showing The Office or I'm Alan Partridge.

Didn't 2W start following the demise of BBC Choice Wales?

No, BBC CHOICE didn't end until early 2003 when BBC THREE started, whereas BBC 2W began in November 2001. Despite the launch 'blurb' it's never actually been clear why the channel is there as a network opt-out for 90 mins when most of the target audience don't like it.

EDIT:
A quick check reveals that the "region/nation" versions of BBC CHOICE were removed in 2001, so you could be right.

If I remember rightly, when BBC Choice Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were axed, their places on DSat were replaced immediately by the BBC Two variants.

At this point, it was listed as BBC Two Wales, becoming BBC 2W a while later.

As is being speculated in the S4C thread, the service that 2W currently provides may well move to S4C after DSO.

"Channel 4" is available on all digital platforms in Wales (even Freeview), albeit that it isn't inbetween ITV1 and Five, but is further along the EPG (e.g. Freeview channel 8 ).

This makes a nonsense of S4C on digital platforms re-broadcasting any "Channel 4" programmes. Hence the existence of "S4C Digidol" which replaces the "Channel 4"-ified bits of the S4C analogue schedule with more S4C-only programming.

There's no reason why the post-DSO version of S4C necessarily has to be a Welsh-language-only channel. It may not have any "Channel 4" programmes on it anymore, but it can still have "English-language programmes for a Welsh audience" (i.e. exactly what BBC 2W curretly is).

So, I suspect that all the "English-language programmes for a Welsh audience" type stuff that's currently on BBC 2W will be moved over to S4C, post-DSO. And therefore, BBC Two in Wales on all digital platforms will revert to being like the current analogue BBC Two Wales (i.e. generally showing the same programmes as BBC Two England/Network, but with "...Wales"-branded continuity).

When digital TV launched in 1998 in the UK the three BBC Nations (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) all had national variants of BBC Choice, and a digital presentation area to deliver these.

In 2001 the BBC decided to close the BBC Choice national variants, and replaced them with BBC Two Digital variants on satellite, and the nations then had an extra presentation area. BBC Wales continued to use their existing facilities to produce BBC Two Wales for analogue, and used the BBC Choice facilities for 2W on digital. (BBC Two analogue in Wales is still a BBC Two Wales branded service AIUI, so effectively there are two BBC Two presentation areas in Cardiff?)

As others have noted - the analogue/digital split will cease after DSO.

Anyone get the feeling the news will be moving to 2 again tonight as Murray is on court at the moment?

EDIT: ah, looks somebody with a clue is running things today - the Murray match has moved to BBC2

I suspect someone is still ploughing through the e-mails from viewers AND from BBC regional newsrooms complaining about the move of the saturday teatime regional news to BBC Two ... (Particularly as BBC London didn't warn BBC Two digital viewers in England outside the London patch to switch to analogue...)

Can the same not also be said for the network bulletin they at the end they should have pointed people to analogue?

It really should be an absolute no-no to move the (regional) news over to BBC Two nowadays.

I know that BBC Two cannot split England (plus Manx & CI) into regions on Sky, but is this also true on Freeview, Virgin, and any other cable and/or digital platforms?

Even if it's only Sky viewers that'd be effected, that's still gonna be a significant % of viewers. To leave them all stuck with London News in unacceptable. Especially once there'll no longer be the option of switching over to analogue.

They perhaps got away with it yesterday, as it was only a short bulletin. But, there's no way that the could have left lots of non-London English viewers stuck with London News, for the main 30-minute programme.

If we still had UK Today or something, perhaps it wouldn't seem quite so bad. But we don't, so it's poor to move regions over to the non-region-friendly digital BBC Two.

As a non-sports fan, I've always detested the way that general purpose entertainment channels' schedules get interfered with by sport, and I'm anything but alone in that feeling.

In a post-analogue UK, I feel that there really needs to be things like a "BBC Sport" channel etc, so that sport finally stops interfering with other things.

What'd be the point of keeping UK Today for such a rare event?


It's all digital platforms.