I think it VERY likely that "BBC1 ########" will be the formal EPG description - not "BBC ONE ##"....
There is a precedent for two letter designations - the nations have them. There isn't 'BBC1 Wales' but 'BBC ONE Wa'. Ditto other nations. I realise they probably won't use the locations of the centres, but it wouldn't surprise me if they refuse to use 'BBC1' followed by a more descriptive region name instead of 'BBC ONE' followed by a 2 or 3 letter abbreviation.
Yep - but there are only four nations currently - so the "BBC ONE ####" designation works reasonably clearly "Wa","Scot" and "NI" are all quite clear. Continuing with this style for 18 regional variations of BBC One would not be clear to the viewer, and this change is going to be confusing enough for many viewers as it is.
I am confident that the BBC will make the sensible move to a smaller prefix of "BBC1" instead of "BBC ONE", allowing for 3 more character to be used for the regional suffix.
AIUI the postcode mapping will initially be based on the ITV DSat tables - which are markedly different in some cases to the BBC DSat regions (BBC Southampton and Tunbridge Wells are both in the ITV Meridian region, BBC Nottingham, Birmingham and Oxford are all in the ITV Central region, BBC Cambridge and Norwich are both in the Anglia region etc.) Hopefully the tables were prepared for possible ITV sub-regions and this data can be used - but who knows!
I was going to ask about that ... there's some places (Cheltenham and Gloucester spring to mind off the top of my head), which really should be part of the West region but get Midlands Today.
There's also the lovely Swindon, half of which gets PW, the other South Today from Oxford ...
I wonder if they will change the mapping for "trouble spots" like this?
BBC ONE BM = Midlands
BBC ONE HL = East Yorkshire and Lincoinshire
BBC ONE LS = Yorkshire
BBC ONE MR = North West
BBC ONE NC = North East and Cumbria
BBC ONE NO = East (Norwich)
BBC ONE BS = West
BBC ONE NT = East Midlands
BBC ONE OX = South (Oxford Opt-Out)
BBC ONE PY = South West
BBC ONE SO = South
BBC ONE TW = South East
You know, they might just keep the EPG as "BBC One" for all regions, and only label the variations further up the EPG. People will know what version of BBC One they're supposed to see.
Just seen my first few minutes of South East Today, and didn't quite catch the woman's name - if any of you saw it, can you please tell me what her name is?
Liked the background 'window' of Tunbridge Wells, but come on guys, Paul Ross as your Inside Out presenter? Were no other more palatable people available?
Oh, and I saw the West (Bristol) edition of the Politics Show at lunchtime! Very good!!
AIUI the postcode mapping will initially be based on the ITV DSat tables - which are markedly different in some cases to the BBC DSat regions (BBC Southampton and Tunbridge Wells are both in the ITV Meridian region, BBC Nottingham, Birmingham and Oxford are all in the ITV Central region, BBC Cambridge and Norwich are both in the Anglia region etc.) Hopefully the tables were prepared for possible ITV sub-regions and this data can be used - but who knows!
They're using postcode mapping? I thought that viewers had to manually pick their region with an add on piece of software?
They do need to very quickly adopt BBC postcode tables. Apart from those examples you've allready mentioned, an obvious one which springs to mind is that the BBC South West region is considerably smaller than the ITV South West region. And similarly, the BBC West region is geographically twice the size of it's ITV counterpart. ITV's tables might be OK just to get the system up and running, but they need to move to their own very quickly.
Regarding the South West, I wanted to see the South West Politics Show but for some reason, the channel for BBC South West was switched off, and all I got was a black screen looking at me. Will it be that some of these test channels from now to official turn-on will on occasion be switched off? If so, why is this?
hmm maybe there aren't enough contrib circuits to go around in that part of the world yet? I would imagine the Politics Show could use a couple of circuits so maybe there weren't enough back to London?
