Is that the best you can do? You're like a crappy panto villan.
Go away.
EDIT: And as if by *magic* you have deleted your message about my mummy tucking me into bed. Pathetic. Maybe you should add one of these to complete the effect.
Fine, how about not spending the cost and knocking a few quid off the licence fee?
I don't know the precise BBC circumstances, but I Really hate HTV West is absolutely right - streaming costs are much lower nowadays, especially if you do all the work yourself rather than outsourcing it, or (like the BBC do for their broadband services) set up peering arrangements (shared bandwidth basically) with ISPs.
More to the point, local radio is incredibly cheap - a presenter on Radio Kent, when questioned about it, recently said the station cost you all of 10p of your license fee over an entire *year* (I calculate that, depending on the number of TV licenses in the UK, that works out at a bit over £1m?).
Now of course, its not quite as cheap as that, because I'm also paying for the other 39 (or so) local stations I can't/don't listen to, which is all the more reason why the BBC should stream them, put them on DSAT, whatever, so I have the choice to tune in if I want to.
Streaming is actually really taking off for radio now.
(a) the revised BBC radio player (launched in the last week or two) is far better than the previous version, they've improved almost all the irritating faults it had like not knowing how long some clips were, the fast foward/rewind not working or being too inflexible, being able to open each clip in Realplayer instead etc. etc.
(b) generally, not specific to BBC, far more people have broadband now and can use the internet whilst having a radio stream in the background. Yes you can get video as well, but frankly it still doesn't appeal to me apart from things which I couldn't get via any other platform - I'd still rather watch something on a proper TV set.
(c) RealPlayer was for a long time castigated for its adware, bloatedness, and constant reminders to upgrade for premium services. The new version they've released starts quicker and is far neater in my view - and also features instant rewind, live pause etc. etc. - which is invaluable for web streams. You will still find, like browsers, your internet media players battle with each other over which takes priority for certain file types, playing CDs and so on, but on the whole its much better behaved - and if you want the Tivo style stuff, probably worth paying the one-off fee to get the full version.
Anyway, with regards to local radio, I'd be interested to see a rollout schedule when one becomes available. Kent is getting the local DAB service switched on at the end of this month.
Is that the best you can do? You're like a crappy panto villan.
Go away.
EDIT: And as if by *magic* you have deleted your message about my mummy tucking me into bed. Pathetic. Maybe you should add one of these to complete the effect.
Coming back to the point of this thread, what might work for putting local radio on to D-SAT to overcome the problem of monopolising Sky's EPG would be to provide the facilities on some sort of a postcode system? Have the default local station for that postcode, and then say, put 5 bordering local BBC radio stations on the EPG too. Take me for example:
My default postcoded station would be BBC Radio Lincolnshire.
My five bordered stations would be:
BBC Radio Humberside
BBC Radio Nottingham
BBC Radio Leicester
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
BBC Radio Norfolk.
If you wanted access to any more, you would be able to by using the 'Add Channels' function.