New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

In the same way that stories about London, would be relevant to ST viewers in Bracknell or Farnborough ?

You have to draw the line somewhere surley. As I said, this was a story about a suburb east of Brighton, the other side of the conurbation from the coastal towns you mention.

I'd expect a London reporter who's in East Berkshire to have their story featured on ST. For instance, Wendy Hurrell's Inside Out report about bilking in Slough was featured on the South edition.

Brighton is still close enough to be relevant to ST's viewers who commute there and Meridian still consider Brighton to be part of their West news region.

And how many people in Slough watch South Today ? And that's another bit of padding out ST (and other regions do) lift sections out of Inside Out, and run what is essentially a glorified trailer, in the guise of a news story. Only to see it all again 45 mins later on Inside Out.



Yes, and loads of people from Winchester commute to London, so ST should cover London stores then ?

Meridian 'West' is a different kettle of fish, because that's the version available on DTT in Brighton

Many homes in Brighton have aerials pointed at Rowridge, so they will still be getting BBC South Today & even those on Whitehawk Hill may find they have BBC South added in the 800's on their Freeview boxes if their aerials also face Rowridge. They mentioned this on South Today when Whitehawk Hill switched to a BBC South East feed as many viewers wanted to continue to watch South Today.

Also where neighbouring regions overlap there may be viewers watching, so news from those areas has to be provided too. Not to mention some areas which don't receive South Today via transmitters, or have fringe reception, such as Weymouth & Guildford, both have BBC South allocated to channel 101 on Sky/Freesat, despite the towns relay transmitters providing BBC South West & BBC London respectively, so these also get mentioned too.

Many Thanks, now I know

Well yes. Cardiff is full of homes that use Mendip, rather than Wenvoe, but do Points West cover the city ?

North Wales is full of homes using Winter Hill, does NWT cover the N Wales coast ?

Not really the same thing though is it! Brighton has always been covered by South Today & even though the 'local' transmitter is now showing South East Today much of the town is still within Rowridges footprint, making it an overlap area, so it still needs to be covered. It's not as if Brighton is some far away place within a completely different region where a handful of homes can pick up a Rowridge signal The ITV feed from Whitehawk Hill is still from Rowridge...

Should South Today stop covering places such as Reading, Fleet or Farnborough because most people have their aerials pointed at Crystal Palace?? Or large chunks of Dorset that can also receive Mendip or Stockland Hill?

Reading and Fleet are about 50/50 CP and Hannington, Farnbourgh is 75% CP, so I'd ditch that from ST too

The fact is BBC South Today's region is already ridiculously large, (and Oxford is only a part time sub opt).
It's bad enough everyone having their news diluted because of it. The BBC have decided (for better or worse) to move Brighton into the SE region. D-Sat was been mapped to that for years. Whitehawk Hill is the offical transmitter that covers Brighton, sure you can receive Rowridge in some places, though it's badly affected by tidal fading.

As usual, it's a BBC region padding out its programme by lifting and donating stories from/to its neighbours, because it's cheap and easy to do so, (as well as taking reports from Inside Out, and I notice now Late Kick Off, and presenting them as news too).

A few years ago they ran a report about a survey of TV reception difficulties from the Stockland Hill transmitter, (which is, and always has been allocated to Plymouth). Someone at ST obviously thought, ah Dorset, that'll do, and lifted it.

Rant over

But they do still have viewers in Brighton though, not to mention those areas very close to Brighton that are on Rowridge, so news from there will be very relevant to them. It's the same as Weymouth, which has a very patchy reception from Rowridge, with most using the towns relay or Stockland Hill which both transmit BBC SW & ITV Westcountry, news from Weymouth is relevant to viewers in Dorchester & parts of Portland that can receive Rowridge...

Brighton being a city will get more news anyway as more people live there & more happens, same goes for Southampton & Portsmouth (which many moan about taking up most of the news too). In smaller towns & sleepy villages the most that ever happens is a bus shelter being vandalised or a cat being stuck up a tree, if something newsworthy happened they would report it

The Inside Out London report I mentioned was a Thames Valley Police operation, their policing area covers a lot of BBC South's editorial area which includes the Oxford sub-opt, so should licence payers miss out on a story which affects them, but then only a 1/4 of the viewers who are policed by them can watch the report on their tv miss it because it was produced by a BBC London team who are logistically nearer to Slough than the Southampton or Oxford based crew?

If anything, BBC London should be improving it's coverage of the home counties, including Reading and the M4 corridor as they appear to cover the GLA area and a token election story from Hertfordshire if tonight's bulletin is to go by.

It always happens in overlap areas and it's never satisfactory either way. Oxford will do stories in Henley on Thames because the town is in Oxfordshire and some of it does receive the Beckley transmitter, the rest getting a relay of CP. Oxford also covers Milton Keynes when it's a major transport or commerce story despite the fact that virtually no-one in MK gets us (they're all mapped to London or Cambridge). The argument is that people living in Oxford's patch in Bucks may work or travel in MK so it's of interest. Swindon is another town that's split; between Oxford and Bristol. After DSO it would seem Oxford's coverage of Swindon is actually a little improved.

The truth is that there are days when in order to fill the programme, and this goes for larger regions as much as smaller ones, there will always need to be fringey stories included. There are times when stories are covered when they're not really in the patch, but it's better for a story to be covered than not at all.

apparently South Today fell off air quite spectacularly at lunchtime, with what looked like power issues