BBC Regional Redundancies

I would agree with this, it sounds like trying to find the answer to a problem that doesn't exist. There's no point in cutting ten minutes off the regional news, to remove the "fluff" or the "nonsense" - most of the audience enjoy the "fluff", and to make them slick, boring hard news programmes is to ignore what makes them popular. They're billed as "regional news magazines", with the latter word being very important.

Also considering that A LOT of people in the BBC know of and read this forum, it certainly doesn't help morale. So can the silly "speculaton" / "maybe they can try this thing and that thing" stop.

After the first few minutes, on an average day there are generally ‘fluff’ pieces within the programme anyway. As you say people do enjoy these features when it truly relates to them. However when it comes to the ‘out of area’ content on ITV Regional News, people are NOT as keen. For example a feature (or basically promo) for Britain’s Got Talent is at best a National feature and shouldn’t be using tedious links to the Region to justify being within the programme. Give me twenty minutes of high quality Regional News programming over disguised promotion any day. The BBC would be foolish to make the same mistake as ITV in my opinion, especially with The One Show following straight after the News.

I don’t mean any disrespect to any professionals at either BBC or ITV btw, in fact the Local/Regional teams are the ones I respect most in these organisations as I consider their professionalism under tight deadlines and monetary concerns to be admirable. However everyone has an opinion and this is mine.

Regarding ‘out of region’ content, one last week involved a report about how people are decorating for Christmas early, they interviewed some people in a garden centre, and the owner of somewhere that sells real trees. Nowhere specific was mentioned, but then on Calendar it linked into a live OB from outside a house that was switching on their over the top Christmas lights, so the national content linked into local content.

Another one a previous week explained how universities are having to do virtual open days this year. They interviewed students, and a vice chancellor, they didn’t say which university they were representing, it was all generalised.

It’s often stuff like the two above examples, rather than a promo for BGT.

For the avoidance of doubt, there was no disrespect to anybody intended in my post. I disagree slightly with Steve W, there clearly is a problem being caused by the scale of the staffing cuts being proposed. You cannot lose that many posts and continue to produce the same amount of quality content.

My suggestion was intended to suggest that some of the lighter stuff is not really region specific and could really be shared on a national basis with a few format tweaks.

A quick fix generally only causes more long term problems. I don't really think anyone will be less appreciative of the BBC due to Inside Out being axed. Worth remembering this report is in a climate of an unprecedented campaign against the BBC.

They haven't made these cuts for fun thought, they've made them because they've been forced upon them - often directly or indirectly by the people who moan the most. Reversing such decisions now after the redundancies have gone through will only end up making the decision even more costly than if they hadn't made it at all.


The reason people perhaps appreciate it less is because it isn't the service it once was due to being underfunded. The only way to correct that is restoring the funding it needs to avoid having to make cuts like it has in recent months - and the way for people to achieve that is at the ballot box.

I don't think there is much chance now of reversing the Inside Out cuts or increasing regional budgets. The fact that Inside Out will now be replaced by a new programme in six areas only happened because of the outcry from MPs and others. That decision means more savings have had to be made elsewhere.

This is all happening simply because there isn't enough money coming in to the BBC to pay for the current service. The Nations and News are going through the same process and on a similar scale. If you want to allocate more money to regions then other areas would have to take an even bigger hit.

Things are so bad that redundant staff in the regions have been told they need to go by the beginning of January just in an attempt to balance the books for this financial year. The next financial year is when we'll see the effects of the new master plan to cope with 450 fewer regional staff (and keep an eye on News who are losing 520).

Yes, quite. Make cuts elsewhere not local services. Start with the approx £70m per year they hand over to the Premier League for rights.

I'm sure if you ask the casual viewer what they would prefer - football highlights from one of the major domestic leagues in the world, or a totally unnecessary two headed presentation of their local news magazine programme - like it or not - the football highlights would win out.

The casual viewer can get the highlights elsewhere. Heaven forbid the compromise is sitting through a couple of ad breaks. Not so many options with local tv & radio. I find it incredible that license fee money goes to one of the major domestic leagues in the world & when they can’t afford to do local news & radio.

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Except the contract with the Premier League runs until 2022 so it won't help currently. I expect when the deal comes up for renegotiation things might change.