Nations vs Regions

This also works for a lot of local news rooms, you could live on the edge of area but if something 5mins down the road happens and is in the other franchise, then there don't care.

True, but there should be a healthy overlap. Granada, for example, as Manc-centric as it was, would sometimes foray into North Wales, pre-ITVplc, if there was something noteworthy to report. BBC North West have always stopped dead on the Welsh border. So, Saltney, despite essentially being a contiguous suburb of Chester, gets ignored and is expected to get news from distant Cardiff, despite Chester being 'town' and stories from there most likely being of interest to the residents. If Liverpool was in the United States, it would almost certainly have its own television region probably covering a ring from Southport out to Warrington, down to Chester and into North East Wales. The towns on the periphery would probably also get neighbouring regional services. In fact, there are plenty of metropolitan areas in the United States which straddle state lines, but the TV stations largely ignore them. Yet, cross the Welsh border and "here be dragons", ironically perhaps.

The ITA/IBA had a much better handle on all this. The ITV companies simply had to provide a regional programming service, the depth and breadth of which was defined by the resources that an ITV company could muster, which was broadly based upon their revenue, which was broadly based on the population of their catchment area.

Therefore ATV, Granada, and Yorkshire produced regional output that was comparable to BBC 'Nations' output.

Anglia and Southern made BBC East and BBC South look like some sort of part time hospital TV efforts !

Yes.

Reason 1: The "network" version's usual broadcast area also covers the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which are not part of England.

Reason 2: The "network" version is also the default UK sustaining feed if any/all of the Devolved Nations' own variants fall off air.

Also, it would mean two different suffixes would be seen at different times by viewers in any one BBC English Region. (i.e. "BBC One (HD) England" most of the time, and e.g. "BBC One (HD) South" (or whatever) before regional programmes).

Personally, the current situation of having either the regional suffix or no suffix whatsoever I find far preferable to having two different suffixes appearing at different times. I'm not going to claim that the latter would be "confusing for viewers" or similar such drivel, but there's something that feels "messy" about it, which would offend my OCD!

That doesn't stop it being branded 'BBC 2 England' on the Sky and Freesat EPGs

I agree with Mike W on page 1 about BBC Wales/Scotland being split or even having opt outs.

Reporting Scotland is a poor poor programme. It skiffs the surface of the cities and that's about it. Likes of Cameron Buttle who covers the South of Scotland I see very little! Border's barely get's a mention unless of some Snow.

If with the franchise renewals on ITV see Border Scottish become STV, It will help with Holyrood news but plenty of the big central Scotland news will just be no good to southern Scotland, completely ailen. It's like that on Reporting Scotland.

Lookaround (certainly pre-tyne tees) done a decent enough job and should be saluted. It's time for the forgotten part of Scotland to have decent local news, whether it be for 30 minutes (which could be a problem) or for 10-15 min opt out on both BBC and STV.

Its has been noted that STV has travelled down to the borders to cover story which are not in there area, I do believe there area might get an opt out, I bet I a lot of people in Gala would like to know whats going in Edinburgh, instead of Middlesbrough

I think these are both pretty much the reason default BBC is not called BBC England. Also, there's no England programming. It's either regional or, the vast majority of the time, generic UK programming; even if Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland happen to opt out from the network all at once. There's no Reporting England, no politics show called St Georges Eye, no soap opera that's 'English', akin to River City ( I don't understand why it's Scotland only anyhow).

Like I touched upon earlier, the British establishment don't see England as any sort of actual entity. They see it as default Britain, whilst Scotland, Wales & North Ireland are 'exotic' Britain. This is why it's not seen as an anomoly to most of the suits in Whitehall that Westminster continues to control almost every aspect of life in England whilst much is devolved in the 'nations'. The idea of England is an oxymoron to them. Something like an English Parliament, to them, would be like France giving Corsica a devolved parliament then having to give mainland France a parliament. They view it a lot like China in a way. Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland are special administrative areas, like Hong Kong and Macau with their own local regimes, whereas England is mainland China, mostly controlled from the centre. China's provinces. Guangdong, Hubei, Quinghai etc can be substituted for North West, East Midlands, South West etc. It's ignorant towards England and patronising towards Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland and causes issues within the UK that I believe have always been avoidable (accepting that Northern Ireland has a somewhat complicated situation). But hey, these suits also think Liverpool is a large, rundown housing estate on the outskirts of Manchester, rather than an entirely separate city of similar stature. That's what we're up against in this country.

I think sub-outs in the 'national' programmes are probably more realistic and even if one was to eventually split them up entirely, it's pretty much convention that they start out as sub-opts anyway. Reporting Scotland could have sub-opts similar to the existing STV news areas. In addition, I'd probably consider an Inverness-based Highland & Islands sub-opt separate from the Grampian area. The Border TV part would be its own sub-opt and I'd perhaps consider 'petalling' the Black Hill transmitter to that it beams the Glasgow variant westwards and the Edinburgh variant eastwards.

For Wales Today, at least four sub-opts. One for Cardiff and the south east, one for Swansea and the south west, a mid-Wales one probably based at Aberystwyth and either a whole North Wales one, or split into north west and north east sub-opts.

Some sub-opts in Radio Scotland & Radio Wales would be nice too.

As for Northern Ireland, I'd leave it as it is, to be honest. It's small enough really.

Agreed. The BBC website has had regional sections for Scotland (E, W, NW, NE, S, and Tayside) and Wales (NW, NE, Mid, SW, and SE) for ages. Ever since I first became aware of them, I have wondered whether they would eventually spawn corresponding TV news sub-opts.

Radio Scotland does split for news and weather: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_Scotland#Local_opt-outs

Never knew that, except for the Northern Isles. Surprising that Glasgow & Edinburgh don't seem to get separate opt-outs.