UK Today

Yes, we got UK Today on BBC ONE Northern Ireland analogue one night last year when BBC Northern Ireland shut down because of a bomb alert.

(And English continuity and BBC ONE idents all night and the next morning. Every announcer said 'This is BBC ONE, we apologise to viewers in Northern Ireland, we cannot bring you your regional programmes tonight' ) .

(Edited by rdd at 3:08 pm on July 8, 2001)

What? Would u get to choose what region you watched? tHAT WOULD BE WICKED

Yep, that would be hopefully what happens! TV Home will have every title then!!

Don't get too excited ... I don't think a) it's going to happen for quite a while as has been said it would be very costly and b) I expect it will work on postcodes just like the national regions do ... so you would only get the region you lived in.

Unlikely in the short term I would imagine. The two reasons I have heard for BBC One Nations being limited by postcode are :

1. Sports Rights. The Nations show national teams competing in sports that the BBC only owns national (rather than UK wide) rights to. Therefore to avoid breaching copyright these have to be limited to viewers only in the Nation.

2. Equity Fees. The Nations often delay comedy and drama programmes, showing them at different times to Network. If you can watch the same programme twice - say by watching it on BBC One England, and then BBC One Scotland an hour later - Equity would class this as a repeat, and request artist repeat fees.

(I believe less drama/comedy is timeshifted on BBC Two)

I don't know if these are the real reasons - but both have a degree of plausibility.

The sports could be blocked and only available to that nation like on BBC TWO.

I've also heard that they won't do it because of timeshifted programmes. BBC TWO Nations has opt outs of the main England feed rather than time shifting doesn't it?