BBC Oneness - idents and presentation

Says who? There are lots of niche programmes in non-prime time slots that would do better if moved. You can’t move them all.

With only 6% of people in the UK being practising Christians according to a survey last year, 3pm on a Sunday on the BBC’s flagship channel seems a pretty good deal.

I saw a survey the other day that puts it at 2% of people under 24 identify as Christian.

Well I do, as I said it. As for the religious/ethic programme broadcasting at 11:30am on BBC one is really bad scheduling as most people interested in those programmes will be in church or other forms of worship.

Historically 'The God Slot' on Sunday mornings contained an act of worship, and was designed (partially at least) for those who couldn't attend a church service. (This is the Day was a long running strand, and there were often televised worship services from churches for the Sundays running up to Easter and Christmas)

Those days are long gone. Sunday Morning Live and The Big Questions are not worship shows, and are more discussion shows with a slightly more ethical and spiritual slant. I'm not sure they are designed for churchgoers specifically.

From what I've seen of SML it very rarely has a religious aspect - last week it was a woman arguing keeping animals as pets was unethical, even though she had a cat.

I do think the regional politics show will end up moving at some point to a late night slot.

SML from Belfast certainly used to have more of a Christian element, but has been watered down so much that it's basically mid-morning filler.

You see more journalists as guests than priests, iman's or rabbi's.

I always think of them as being religious programmes that are a bit shy of mentioning anything about religion.

The problem with the regional politics show, as with regional news, is that it's not of equal interest across the UK.

So in Scotland, which has a devolved parliament and an ongoing independence debate, there's a shared interest in a lot of issues that are being talked about. Northern Ireland has an entirely different political system which requires its own show, especially given the lack of knowledge about how NI works across most of the UK.

Whereas in London, the region is too big and has too many local councils etc to cover in a way the whole audience would care about. And the national news sweeps up the rest.

Yes - but in other English regions there is more to talk about I suspect. East Anglia, the South West, the North East etc. all have political stories there are unlikely to be covered in any great depth on the national news, and the London politics shows have always covered the GLA (albeit of little interest to those watching outside the M25) pretty effectively.

How much interest in this is there is for a mainstream audience? Should the BBC be doing it ? Two totally different questions.

London has The London Assembly, GLA and Mayor though. The population in their patch is more than the Scottish parliament.

There's still lots of local politics that doesn't make the national news. Remember just because Parliament and Whitehall are in London it doesn't make everything that happens there a London story

Not a huge fan of local political shows but more often than not from what I've seen they tend to be a regional perspective on national issues rather than concentrating on local issues.

I think that's inevitable. Most local issues aren't of interest to the rest of the region, with the exception of things like transport.