The Newsroom

Regional news boundaries

Split from Best and Worst Regional Titles and Themes (August 2020)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
LL
London Lite Founding member
Andrew posted:
Two key points are that the East Midlands sits geographically more northerly than the West Midlands, and that Derby and Nottingham are both sat at the south end of their respective counties, so places like Chesterfield are only just down the road from Sheffield. These are the main reasons for this North Midlands region and why it is entirely taken from the East Midlands. I wouldn’t say any of the West Midlands would be similarly sliced off.


Stoke is nearly equally distant from Birmingham and Manchester which should take an equal amount of time to reach either city, this has led to BBC Midlands/ITV Central and BBC Radio Stoke being the main provider in parts of South Cheshire.

Signal 1 has a transmitter on 96.4 which covers an area which overlaps with the Manchester radio locals.
LL
London Lite Founding member
Ballyboy posted:
What parts of Gloucestershire does Midlands Today cover. just Cheltenham and Gloucester?


North Glos. South Glos is Points West. However it's one of those areas where Sky/Freesat and Virgin customers receive Points West by default, so there's a lot of sharing between PW and Midlands Today of North Gloucestershire stories.

Ridge Hill of course provides a local minimux so that ITV viewers don't have to watch Birmingham centric news as part of the arrangement when ITV were allowed to split Central's former south opt into West to cover Herefordshire, while Oxfordshire and Swindon were moved to the shared Thames Valley opt, which is now fully part of ITV Meridian.
MA
Meridian AM
manclad posted:
Meridian AM posted:
Ballyboy posted:
North Midlands means North Nottinghamshire and North Derbyshire covering towns like Retford, Worksop, Chesterfield and Dronfield.


So it is the ''northern East Midlands''


TBF, CA for Look North back in the day was “across, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North Midlands, this is BBC One With Look North”

It might not be referred to as much nor officially but by virtue, there is a North Midlands.


Should be 'northern Midlands' - which not an official political region, but could refer to the north of the West Midlands (north Staffordshire) and East Midlands.
Remember, Lincolnshire is officially an East Midlands county (politically). So northern Lincolnshire could also be included when referring to the 'northern/north Midlands'.

The East Midlands political region is very large in area from northern Lincolnshire down to southern Northamptonshire. However it is one of the smallest TV regions, due to so much overlap, particularly with Look North in Lincolnshire and Look East in Northamptonshire.
Last edited by Meridian AM on 15 August 2020 6:48pm
BB
BBI45
London Lite posted:
BBI45 posted:
This somewhat links back to the issue of local news when the spillway at Toddbrook Reservoir partially collapsed. As a result of the proximity to the borders between NWT, EMT, and Look North, all three needed to cover them in some way. I also remember one night where there were concerns about the weather as they were draining the reservoir, a shared evening programme was put out on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Sheffield, and BBC Radio Derby. All of which would have normally joined with other stations.

For me, the broadcasting mish-mash is one of the few redeeming qualities of living in Derbyshire.


Certainly one of the quirks of living in Buxton is that the local tv news comes from Salford, while BBC local radio comes from Derby.

High Peak Radio in it's current form as Imagine Radio is currently broadcasting from Ashbourne for breakfast and the rest from Stockport. I would have thought the NW radio regional stations, plus Hits Radio, Radio X, Capital and XS Manchester also get as far as Buxton?

I'm not speaking from experience here, so I could be wrong, but I don't think you would be able to get Manchester stations in Buxton. I'm fairly sure that you could if you continued up the A6 to Chapel-en-le-Frith and beyond. But until you get to that point, I think you'd be stuck in an area where you can't access stations which would serve you well (Manchester) and end up with stations which don't seem to acknowledge your existence (Derby).

On the few occasions where I have listened to Radio Derby, outside of the traffic bulletins, they don't seem to acknowledge anywhere north of Belper (but maybe I'm just listening at the worst times). I've also never heard Buxton mentioned, except when they're joking about the one time when a summer cricket match there was cancelled due to snow.
NL
Ne1L C
London Lite posted:
Lets not forget other parts of the administrative East Midlands largely in the High Peak area of the Peak District that are served either by NWT and ITV Granada or Look North/Calendar. It's a really patchy area when it comes to serving with the right local news.

High Peak Radio was an excellent resource for the whole area, which has since been bought by the owner of Imagine Radio in Stockport, slapped their name on it with 20 hours per day from Stockport.


Look North Leeds/Hull and Calendar between them cover five full counties and three more "partial" counties many of which have diddlysquat in common with each other. Patchy is one way to describe it. A mess would be another.
AN
Anglialad
I think all this transmitter patch talk should have it's own thread because we have gone completely off topic here. We don’t mind 1 or 2 posts about it, but not so it’s half of the thread (Don’t get me wrong though there are posts that answer my personal assumptions about regional news transmission patches that I’ve had for a long time).

I guess people just need to read the title and hopefully try and get things back on track.
Last edited by Anglialad on 15 August 2020 8:42pm
MA
Meridian AM
Ne1L C posted:
London Lite posted:
Lets not forget other parts of the administrative East Midlands largely in the High Peak area of the Peak District that are served either by NWT and ITV Granada or Look North/Calendar. It's a really patchy area when it comes to serving with the right local news.

High Peak Radio was an excellent resource for the whole area, which has since been bought by the owner of Imagine Radio in Stockport, slapped their name on it with 20 hours per day from Stockport.


Look North Leeds/Hull and Calendar between them cover five full counties and three more "partial" counties many of which have diddlysquat in common with each other. Patchy is one way to describe it. A mess would be another.


Similar here in Southampton, often hearing news from as far a field as Banbury and Aylesbury, etc.
The region is far too big, even taking into account the 10 minute Oxfordshire opt-out.
It's not a service to rely on for 'local' news, as there are too many areas to cover. And many of the places don't have anything in common.
BA
Ballyboy
Look East west and South Today from oxford should be on weekends for more local news
LL
London Lite Founding member
Meridian AM posted:
Ne1L C posted:
London Lite posted:
Lets not forget other parts of the administrative East Midlands largely in the High Peak area of the Peak District that are served either by NWT and ITV Granada or Look North/Calendar. It's a really patchy area when it comes to serving with the right local news.

High Peak Radio was an excellent resource for the whole area, which has since been bought by the owner of Imagine Radio in Stockport, slapped their name on it with 20 hours per day from Stockport.


Look North Leeds/Hull and Calendar between them cover five full counties and three more "partial" counties many of which have diddlysquat in common with each other. Patchy is one way to describe it. A mess would be another.


Similar here in Southampton, often hearing news from as far a field as Banbury and Aylesbury, etc.
The region is far too big, even taking into account the 10 minute Oxfordshire opt-out.
It's not a service to rely on for 'local' news, as there are too many areas to cover. And many of the places don't have anything in common.


Meridian East isn't too bad as it has a more tightly defined area, but I've found Meridian West generic, despite having the legendary Fred Dinenage as lead anchor.

Brighton is a special case. Whitehawk Hill has BBC One SE and a special sub-region of ITV Meridian with the news bulletins from the West, while I believe they take ads from the east sub region?
MI
m_in_m
Ballyboy posted:
Look East west and South Today from oxford should be on weekends for more local news

I think for this to happen we would have to see a change of mindset at the BBC and allow these short bulletins to be pre-recorded so that either Cambridge or Norwich and Oxford or Southampton are providing output for both programmes rather than needing to duplicate the entire team for a very short programme.
MA
Meridian AM
manclad posted:
Meridian AM posted:
Ballyboy posted:
North Midlands means North Nottinghamshire and North Derbyshire covering towns like Retford, Worksop, Chesterfield and Dronfield.


So it is the ''northern East Midlands''


TBF, CA for Look North back in the day was “across, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the North Midlands, this is BBC One With Look North”

It might not be referred to as much nor officially but by virtue, there is a North Midlands.


If you zoom in on this official ITV map, you will see the county boundaries compared to the TV regions.

Most of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire are indeed in the Yorkshire region.

https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/advertising-on-itv/regional-advertising
NL
Ne1L C
I'm sure every county would love to have a dedicated BBC bulletin and I believe its possible but until or unless digital terrestrial television ends and everyone starts watching though satellite or streaming it won't happen.

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