Nations vs Regions

And Radio Wales used to have opt-outs for Clwyd (as was) and Gwent for many years, with their own breakfast show and a few other things. The Gwent one ended in the mid-eighties but Clwyd carried on until the early nineties before falling foul of cost-cutting and being reduced to news bulletins at breakfast and lunchtime and the odd network show made in North Wales. In the mid-nineties they brought back a Saturday breakfast show for the area - now branded as North East Wales, as Clwyd didn't exist - but they stopped it again a while back. They might still do separate news bulletins, though.

I did work experience at the old Clwyd HQ in Mold about twenty years ago, a year or so before it all moved to Wrexham, and it must have been the most outdated, rundown outpost of the Beeb imaginable. There weren't even enough desks for the entire newsroom to sit down at once.

There was a Radio Gwent too, apparently. There's still Radio Foyle based in Derry which opts out of Radio Ulster.

Sadly, I can see local radio in England going soon, rather than local radio extending to the rest of the UK. I'll be a very sad day if Radio Merseyside is replaced with Radio North West.

Indeed ,now and again STV have been in the Borders for a big story. Quite often if they have covered a news story from the borders and just used the ITV Border reporter. I remember the likes of desperately sad time here in Kelso a couple of years ago when a young lad drowned they had Tim Backshall on live a couple of moments after he was live on Border.

Definitely stories from Edinburgh/Holyrood will be more relevant. However for us in the Borders, seeing the Edinburgh STV programme, they have 2/3 shared stories with Glasgow that I'd think would be too ailen, mean zilch for Southern Scotland. It's going to be an interesting period if STV get South Scotland.

Live from the Salford studios for the whole of Lancashire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cheshire here is the Manchester News!

Well, there is an all-England radio show in the evenings starting in January next year (I believe) replacing all the current regional shows on local radio in the 7-10pm slot. It's not even an in-house production: the contract to produce it has been awarded to an independent company headed by Matthew Bannister. This is a DQF saving.

Local stations will still be able to opt out of it for football commentaries and breaking news but does this spell the end for the current regional shows that are carried (broadly speaking) across a cluster of local stations that mirror the accompanying tv region? I hope not.

DQF. Destroying Quality First.

Thank goodness that horrid man has finally stopped presiding over the destruction of the corporation!

Cost-cutting was not Mark Thompson's fault but rather the government's freezing of the license fee. Why do people always blame those who actually have the difficult job of enforcing things out of their hands?

I don't know, because those people are doing what they're told to in ways that make no sense?

I don't think that will happen any time soon, not after the backlash and subsequent u-turn when the Local Radio cuts were announced under the 'DQF' plans last year.

With the continuing disappearance of commercial local radio it's one of the few unique things that the BBC does these days. The other main advantage it has is that it's popular with politicians - most MPs wouldn't get any airtime at all if it wasn't for their BBC local station

The license fee was frozen anyway, the deal was that the BBC would either lose the government funding for over 75's or have to fund the World Service and S4C.

The problem was that the decision was made very quickly with little negotiation. Although that was mainly due to the government it was generally accepted as a bit of an own goal by the BBC

As I mentioned, I've got a pile of Wales Radio Times from the eighties which promote their imaginatively-named programmes, Good Morning Gwent and Just For Gwent. They opted out for two half-hour spots at breakfast and at drivetime (whereas the Clywd opt-out was breakfast and mid-mornings, you'd think they'd make them the same time). Gwent went a couple of years before Clwyd.

And of course as well as Radio Foyle opting out of Radio Ulster, Gerry Anderson's show at least used to be a Radio Foyle production which Radio Ulster would opt into, because it was so popular on Foyle.

[quote="deejay" pid="843173"]

On the whole yes, regional programming is shared either within a tv region or with the neighbouring one. For example, the South and South East tv region LR stations share evening output, BBC Radio Kent (BBC South East) provide the evening show and BBC Radio Solent (BBC South) with the late show.

All the East and West Midlands stations share a late show from BBC Radio Nottingham with the exception of BBC WM, although WM should take the Midlands wide show from January.