BBC North West Tonight

As a further development to this, Steve Saul doing the late bulletin tonight. I wonder if this is the first time that Andy Gill has ever presented either a main bulletin or other bulletin.

Andy Gill used to present bulletins back in his Granada days. I am sure he presented back years ago during the 1995-2000 look at Oxford Road.

Third week in a row that Annabel Tiffin hasn't been on North West Tonight. Becky Barr deputising tonight, with Roger Johnson.

Just wondering as well, apart from Salford, I would assume that BBC North West uses the local BBC Radio stations for newsgathering, in Liverpool and Blackburn. But, does BBC North West have other newsgathering facilities outwith the local radio station facilities?

There used to be a base in Chester where former reporter and presenter, Kate Simms, was based but I think this has closed now.

Granada used to have a small newsroom (I believe on Lower Bridge Street) in Chester many moons ago. I think if the BBC had a radio station for Cheshire then certainly there’d be a newsroom but there isn’t. Argument being that it’s not too far to travel to Liverpool or Salford from there.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/northwesttonight/profiles/kate_simms.shtml

Indeed there was a BBC base at one time.

I’ve always found it quite odd that there is no BBC Radio Cheshire

I wouldn’t expect it to be set up now, but I’m surprised it didn’t launch in the 70s

Isn't it due to how frequencies were allocated, which led to overlapping coverage of the county from Stoke, Merseyside and Manchester?

It's the same for the commercial sector with the south of the country served by Signal, with the NW by Capital North West and Wales from Wrexham and Hits Radio from Manchester. I don't think Radio City serves Cheshire as Capital serves the NW of the county.

More or less. The BBC local radio stations in any case started life in the 60/70s, as city/town based, rather than county. When the second phase launched in the 80s, they were all county based, Norfolk, Suffolk, Devon, etc
although there were still naming anomalies. BBC Radio Northampton for instance, rather than Northamptonshire. The coverage was increased from city to county for the legacy stations, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Newcastle etc. There are of course stations that straddle counties, BBC Solent, Sheffield, 3CR (that stated life as Bedfordshire)

Therefore there are areas that for technical and geo-political reasons have no BBC LR service. Cheshire and Dorset being the two prime examples.

Dorset does have an opt out, or at least it did (not sure if it still does)

I think with Cheshire the main problem is that it is surrounded by three of the big early established city stations: Manchester, Merseyside and Stoke. Radio Shropshire to the south has a big enough patch as it is and on the other side is a national station, so no potential to extend them to cover the county.

Staffordshire is in a similar situation, it does have Radio Stoke within it, but the rest is split up between WM, Derby and Shropshire. It also straddles two TV regions.

It does, with a local breakfast show.

BBC Surrey while having it's own local branding is an opt-out of BBC Sussex with local breakfast and an hour at drive.

However it doesn't cover the whole of Dorset. Only on FM (I don't think the Dorset local DAB mux carries it ?) , and only Weymouth and Dorchester. West, north, and the urban east Dorset are unable to receive it, (That said it is on Freeview on all three overlapping BBC TV regions)

Coverage map (it's not quite as pessimistic as that in my experience !)

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/mapsys/bbclocal/dorset.jpg