BBC North West Tonight coverage of Cumbria

Indeed, and of course Winter Hill is a legacy from 1956, when the ITA were looking to cover the north of England on Band III VHF. The BBC had managed the same for Band I ( 405 line BBC tv) and Band II (FM radio) by using a single site, Holme Moss, on top of the Pennines. The ITA looked at a site there, or nearby there too but at Band III the signal would not have reached the west and east coasts of Lancs and Yorks, so they opted for Winter Hill, used for 'Lancs', and Emley Moor for 'Yorks'

Granada (and ABC weekends) 1956 to 68 of course used both transmitters.

In the 60s, with the BBC and ITA jointly establishing sites for UHF/625 coverage, Holme Moss
was deemed totally unsuitable, so Winter Hill and Emley were selected for UHF, and both started transmitting BBC 2.

In 1968 the ITA split the north franchise between Lancs and Yorks, with Yorkshire TV allocated Emley, and Granada keeping Winter Hill, but for 7 days a week. At that point too, the BBC added a Band III transmission
of BBC 1 North from Manchester in addition to the Band I BBC 1 service from Holme Moss, but opened a new region from Leeds (to mirror ITV's arrangement) Holme Moss carried BBC Leeds, as did Emley when BBC 1 UHF started from there in Nov 69. Winter Hill carried BBC 1 North West and Granada UHF from Nov 69

Considering we live in 2018 and not in 1976, there are other means of getting local news online and with pictures and video.

You also underestimate how radio can paint a picture of news stories. In any case, when there are emergencies, the BBC is there providing a public service on a PSB radio station. They won't be tuning into a tv channel when it's going to be very likely the electricity is down. They will use a radio or a smartphone however.

The only practical solutions are to either get the BBC to postcode map South Cumbrian postcodes to Look North NE&C (this is common practice in other parts of England that receive another region on Freeview), watch the news on Sky or Freesat in the 900s or use BBC iPlayer where you can either watch the regional news live by changing the region or on catch-up.

How much of an overlap in terrestrial coverage is there in Cumbria - I suspect in some areas people make the choice for themselves what they receive.

It's never that straight forward too - certainly growing up in North East Wales we had access to Granada, Central and HTV Wales and at times all of them were the primary channel on the main set. All three centred news coverage on cities miles away from where we lived but all three covered relevant local areas too - and if there was a story of interest we'd tune in to the most relevant bulletin.

To be honest with local news on the BBC and ITV it's rarely the locality that matters to me - it's the story itself which has to resonate.

It's also worth mentioning that the area Ian mentions is also served by The Bay and Lakeland Radio. The Bay super served their area despite being flooded out at one point.

However, these stations are being acquired by Global, so the local news element may be reduced when they relaunch as Heart and Smooth Radio in the next couple of months, although commercial radio deregulation will have rules regarding local news to ensure that listeners still have some form of a local news service from quasi-national stations.

The Kendal Tx could actually be fed from BBC NE&C rather than NW. In fact currently it's a oddity because
it's one of the few transmitters not to have 'unified' BBC and ITV regions (It carries ITV Border) . Kendal feeds the other South Lakeland relays. It would be simple and easy (mouse clicks, and a bit of repatching (probably virtual in itself !)

And just how would that be a viable operation?

Two distinct points - one BBC and one ITV related.

On the BBC, Look North have an amount of time they target for coverage of news from North and West Cumbria, so regardless of anything else the top stories from Cumbria get airtime. So far as I’m aware, North West Tonight don’t have anything similar so a story from South Cumbria has to be newsworthy enough to compete is what’s already a bigger region. As a result, I’d argue Newcastle gives the better deal that Manchester.

On ITV, we get Border on SD but Granada on HD and +1 (which isn’t unusual I realise - but does enable comparison of the two bulletins) - Border gives South Cumbria by far the best coverage in what for ITV (as opposed to BBC) is an overlap area, and I don’t know anyone who chooses to watch Granada over Border if they have the choice. The days of people in South Cumbria pointing their aerials at Lancaster for better non news programming have obviously long since gone with a common ITV.

Virtually no overlap at all on BBC - the fell range pretty neatly divides transmitters fed by Winter Hill and those fed by Caldbeck.

ITV is different - Kendal and the South Lakes relays are fed ITV and C4 from Caldbeck via Kendal, so there’s a fairly hefty area where you can see a transmitter based in Cumbria (which transmits Border) and one based in Lancashire (Lancaster or Winter Hill itself - which transmit Granada).

As said earlier Cumbria isn’t the only big county to have this issue, Lincolnshire for example in various zones has itv Yorkshire east, itv central East Midlands, itv anglia west and itv anglia east whilst on bbc, look north hull, East Midlands, look East Cambridge andlook East. Bbc Lincolnshire is aligned to hull btw. There is Lincs fm, not sure how helpful this is however. Not sure what you can doin these cases but Cumbria isn’t the only 1. North Yorkshire is similar as well.

Agree about Cheshire’s complete lack of bbc radio which is stupid mind you Durham and Northumberland are poorly served from this point as well.

See also new topic about non uk regional tv as well

I think the UK lacks well defined "regions" (and not just counties, some of them too small) compared to some other European countries, which can make the things a bit messy with regional coverage