Look East (West) to get dedicated programme

I believe that the Beckley (Oxford) transmitter signal's footprint is approximately as follows...

1. Almost all of Oxfordshire (excluding the far southeast (Henley-on-Thames), which is a relay of Crystal Palace (i.e. BBC/ITV London)).

2. Approximately the "Aylesbury Vale" portion of Buckinghamshire. (Possibly some/all of the Milton Keynes district (NE of the county) too?)

3. Overlap with the Mendip transmitter signal in the Swindon (northeast Wiltshire) area.

4. Possibly a little bit of far S-SW Northamptonshire (the likes of Brackley and Silverstone are editorially included in the bulletin).

And that's about it.

Whenever there is a South Today Oxford 22:25 weeknight bulletin available on BBC iPlayer, check out the sub-regional weather map at the end. (Oddly, it labels both High Wycombe and Henley-on-Thames, which are actually BBC/ITV London places).

[quote="Austin Tatious" pid="1110317"]

A picture tells a thousand words

http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/oxford/maps.php

Although the local Oxford mux has a much smaller ( official) footprint

Oxford also covers a reasonable slice of the Cotswolds and at DSO, several relays were changed to Oxford from other transmitters, so Chipping Norton, Stow on the Wold, Bourton on the Water and some parts of Cirencester got a stronger signal. The Cotswolds is naturally hilly of course so has historically patchy tv coverage - split between Sutton Coldfield, Ridge Hill and Oxford transmitters/relays.

I can’t see Oxford getting a half hour like Cambridge has sadly. The population covered is too small. Oxford is really the only major settlement (though a lot of Swindon gets it too). The old Friday half hours, which were a regular fixture from 2005 when the Oxford studio opened until April 2013, did routinely contain prerecorded chats and features, not all of them entirely frivolous and many of them with quality guests. It was the desire of the station at launch to do them, to preview the weekends sport and make a big deal of the opening of the studio (until that point, it had been variously presented from the Southampton second studio or the reception area at Radio Oxford). Half hours still occur occasionally, the next one being planned for this Friday.

Cambridge on the other hand, has a larger population in its area than Norwich AIUI, a slightly larger, squarer studio than Oxford and certainly better gallery. The transmission area being larger and covering more major towns subsequently generates more news, so it’s sensible for them to split away from the east edition.

Good luck to all involved.

What about reading

Yes I enjoy a good book, thanks.

If the BBC Cambridge opt ever became a fully separate service entirely (i.e. including all daytime and weekend bulletins etc), would the region name be "BBC Middle East"?!

No.

Reading, getting its signal from Hannington, gets South Today ex Southampton. Occasionally, infrastructure stories like the redevelopment of the railway station made sense to be shown by Oxford but it was by no means frequent.

Well if the BBC think Look East West is a suitable programme title, I wouldn’t rule anything out.

What about BBC Look East, Then West, Then East Again?

Those titles are only used on iPlayer to differentiate between the two programmes. On screen both editions are Look East. At launch the opt out was branded Close Up but that was dropped some yeara ago - probably before the new Cambridge studio.

Yeah, Look North's the same. Look North (Yorkshire) for the Leeds programme, Look North (East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) for Hull, and Look North (North East and Cumbria) for Newcastle. All three are just Look North on screen.