BBC One East

As I mentioned earlier, Southend Pier is the longest. It is also the most accident-prone, with lots of accidents with ships and tankers and the like. It has caught fire about six times, the worst when the end was demolished and a couple of years ago when the bowling centre burnt down.

But why would BBC ONE change the schedule. Nothing is happening to it now, so what is the point? It's in the South East region anyway!

IIRC - and i'm pretty sure i can - Southend has always been mentioned as news on Look East - it is on the border of both regions but it is more likely to be East as when london live starts it won't fit - Southend isn't london

I just read the radio times. It's on at 10.35, it called 'Carry on up the pier' and it's about Cromer Pier and a show that's currently on it. So why is Ruby Wax on afterwards. It's not even scheduled for Mondays???

I believe there were problems (something to do with network routing versus programme routing) between Plymouth, Bristol and Southampton which caused a howl round to happen as they were setting up for the special opt-out which was taken by all three regions I believe.

Slightly off topic this, but I was reading somewhere (and can't for the life of me remember where!) that the BBC was planning to move all regional programmes such as Close Up North to BBC One in the near future.

Yes - there has been a rumour that all the English regional opt-outs will move from BBC Two to BBC One for quite a while.

This would make sense as the BBC English regions currently only have facilities to allow for opt-outs on BBC One on digital terrestrial, but not BBC Two. Thus as more and more people move to Digital terrestrial the lack of DTT BBC Two opts will become more and more significant...

(I am not sure if there are any plans for the English regions to get DTT opt facilities on Two)

Also if the BBC does end up putting the individual English regions onto digital satellite, it would almost certainly only put the BBC Ones up there, not both networks.

So if the regions couldn't opt to Two what would happen in the event of a Wimbledon run over like happened a couple of weeks ago, apparently?

Would there just be no regional news? Presumably the plan is that once all the regions are on SkyD it's bye-bye to UK Today?

I would assume so. In the future, when all platforms are regional, UK Today (on a normal day - bar local news problems) would be broadcasting to absolutely no-one! Surely at that point, 'London Live / Newsroom SE' would once again become the sustaining feed.

Cheers, Asa

Its a good point!

I doubt that UK Today would continue to broadcast after all platforms on BBC ONE are regional. They could get around this by putting it back on News 24 so if ever a region couldn't broadcast their own local programme then there would be News 24 running on the sustaining feed.

Thats just a though, although during the bomb, Newsroom South East was seen by SkyDigital viewers for a whole day (might of even been two) and I doubt that caused much upset.

I still think putting UK Today back on News 24 would make sense.

If ever a sporting event caused a switch of channel then you could just simulcast the same match for 10 mins on both BBC ONE and TWO but put a message on BBC TWO saying switch over now. I know the idea is to keep it on one channel so the viewers stay with it but I think that idea would work just as well. It would give viewers enough time to switch but without missing any coverage.

I don't think the BBC would risk leaving viewers without regional news. Although it did leave viewers in England during Wimbledon without regional news and instead got UK Today. For SkyDigital viewers, UK Today would of been the normal programme anyway.

When Wimbledon caused the regional opt to be moved to BBC Two, it went out mostly fine on analogue BBC Two - which the majority of viewers still watch. (However the Oxford and Cambridge sub-opts werere not possible on BBC Two analogue, so were cancelled and apologies made)

However all the Digital Terrestrial BBC Two viewers in England got UK Today instead of their regional programme, because, as I mentioned before, BBC Two DTT cannot currently support English regional opt-outs, and is unlikely to gain such a facility in the short-term.

Technically :

The cost of distributing BBC Two Digital in a format which would allow English regional opt-outs, and the extra opt-out and decoding/coding circuitry required is quite significant (effectively the same amount of money as was required for opts on BBC One - the kit is not switchable between networks I believe as it is permanently in circuit)

Given that the total duration of the BBC Two opts is hardly ever more than about 1 hour and 15 minutes A WEEK, I think the BBC decided that it was not cost effective to install the kit in the 15 English regional centres and sub-centres.

I was just going to say that