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Really can’t believe people are upset that a sub-regional English bulletin is being shelved. Talk about spoilt!
The entire ‘nations’ of Wales and Scotland just get one bulletin. In Wales just one radio station where in England it’s pretty much one per county.
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(01-11-2022, 11:06 AM)Moz Wrote: Really can’t believe people are upset that a sub-regional English bulletin is being shelved. Talk about spoilt!
The entire ‘nations’ of Wales and Scotland just get one bulletin. In Wales just one radio station where in England it’s pretty much one per county.
The Welsh and Scottish coverage is totally inadequate, agreed. People are annoyed about this because it is actively losing a service that already exists and serves a community. I live two hours from Norwich, compared to 30 minutes from Cambridge. I will now be getting news focused on the former, when I have only ever known the latter. It's taking away a public service.
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Forgive me for saying this, and of course I have immense sympathies for those who are losing their jobs over this closure, but was it not really unprofessional for the Cambridge team to decline to do a bulletin last night?
Unfortunately, these kind of redundancies/restructurings/closures happen all the time across different industries and there aren’t many professions in which those affected can just decide not to do their job in order to prove a point.
I don’t get the impression that this was an organised strike by the NUJ, for example (which I’d be supportive of in the circumstances) - this seemed far more ad-hoc. I just don’t understand how this can be considered a proportionate response and there aren’t many professions in which you’d get away with it.
And I fully accept that I am opening myself up to be branded ‘heartless’ and so on - I totally sympathise with those affected and I am not supportive of the closure of the service. I was just flabbergasted that the staff elected to pull this move, and I wonder how the BBC will react to this.
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(01-11-2022, 11:12 AM)strollfan Wrote: (01-11-2022, 11:06 AM)Moz Wrote: Really can’t believe people are upset that a sub-regional English bulletin is being shelved. Talk about spoilt!
The entire ‘nations’ of Wales and Scotland just get one bulletin. In Wales just one radio station where in England it’s pretty much one per county.
The Welsh and Scottish coverage is totally inadequate, agreed. People are annoyed about this because it is actively losing a service that already exists and serves a community. I live two hours from Norwich, compared to 30 minutes from Cambridge. I will now be getting news focused on the former, when I have only ever known the latter. It's taking away a public service.
Yep. I do sympathise with the position with regard to local radio where there is a clear imbalance between the service in England and in Scotland and Wales. And I do think you can make an argument that the Oxford sub-region is too small to justify. But the Cambridge region is fairly big. It covers roughly 2.8 million people, just shy of the Welsh population and more than the South East, East Midlands, South West, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and Northern Ireland regions, as well as being the larger of the two East sub-regions (2.8m Cambridge vs 2.2m Norwich).
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(01-11-2022, 12:03 PM)madmusician Wrote: Forgive me for saying this, and of course I have immense sympathies for those who are losing their jobs over this closure, but was it not really unprofessional for the Cambridge team to decline to do a bulletin last night?
Unfortunately, these kind of redundancies/restructurings/closures happen all the time across different industries and there aren’t many professions in which those affected can just decide not to do their job in order to prove a point.
I don’t get the impression that this was an organised strike by the NUJ, for example (which I’d be supportive of in the circumstances) - this seemed far more ad-hoc. I just don’t understand how this can be considered a proportionate response and there aren’t many professions in which you’d get away with it.
And I fully accept that I am opening myself up to be branded ‘heartless’ and so on - I totally sympathise with those affected and I am not supportive of the closure of the service. I was just flabbergasted that the staff elected to pull this move, and I wonder how the BBC will react I
I was surprised it was allowed to happen without much of a fuss, I wonder whether it was more of an emotional response and a decision was made that the crew was not in a position to broadcast that night as opposed to some sort of stand.
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(This post was last modified: 01-11-2022, 01:26 PM by
watchingtv.)
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(01-11-2022, 12:52 PM)strollfan Wrote: (01-11-2022, 12:03 PM)madmusician Wrote: Forgive me for saying this, and of course I have immense sympathies for those who are losing their jobs over this closure, but was it not really unprofessional for the Cambridge team to decline to do a bulletin last night?
Unfortunately, these kind of redundancies/restructurings/closures happen all the time across different industries and there aren’t many professions in which those affected can just decide not to do their job in order to prove a point.
I don’t get the impression that this was an organised strike by the NUJ, for example (which I’d be supportive of in the circumstances) - this seemed far more ad-hoc. I just don’t understand how this can be considered a proportionate response and there aren’t many professions in which you’d get away with it.
And I fully accept that I am opening myself up to be branded ‘heartless’ and so on - I totally sympathise with those affected and I am not supportive of the closure of the service. I was just flabbergasted that the staff elected to pull this move, and I wonder how the BBC will react I
I was surprised it was allowed to happen without much of a fuss, I wonder whether it was more of an emotional response and a decision was made that the crew was not in a position to broadcast that night as opposed to some sort of stand.
Worth noting that I believe Radio Cambridgeshire also operates out of the same building. They'd also learnt of their radio cuts the same day, which included 2-6pm being a shared programme with Norfolk/Suffolk/3CR. Additionally, Sally Chidzoy's tweet seems to imply there's staff shortages already, presumably as any staff who've already handed in their notice won't have been replaced.
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(01-11-2022, 11:06 AM)Moz Wrote: Really can’t believe people are upset that a sub-regional English bulletin is being shelved. Talk about spoilt!
The entire ‘nations’ of Wales and Scotland just get one bulletin. In Wales just one radio station where in England it’s pretty much one per county.
But it is one of the few things England (except London and Manchester) gets though. If you were to look at the total BBC "investment" I'd imagine the couple of hours of TV news and a local radio station (for now) is dwarfed by the size of the operations in Cardiff, Glasgow and Belfast.
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(01-11-2022, 12:03 PM)madmusician Wrote: Forgive me for saying this, and of course I have immense sympathies for those who are losing their jobs over this closure, but was it not really unprofessional for the Cambridge team to decline to do a bulletin last night?
With all the same caveats that you shared, I completely agree.
I think the decision, and those across BBC Local Radio, are the wrong ones made in the wrong way but - as you say - I found it astounding they decided not to broadcast a programme as a result of the news.
If nothing else, surely it provides an opening for those who have made the decision to say 'oh well, they didn't broadcast that night and no-one seemed to notice'. Perplexing.
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(01-11-2022, 11:06 AM)Moz Wrote: Really can’t believe people are upset that a sub-regional English bulletin is being shelved. Talk about spoilt!
The entire ‘nations’ of Wales and Scotland just get one bulletin. In Wales just one radio station where in England it’s pretty much one per county.
To be pedantic Wales has two BBC radio stations, and both of them have opt outs at certain times.
Wales and Scotland (and N Ireland of course) get a lot more TV than one bulletin
(This post was last modified: 01-11-2022, 06:21 PM by
Stooky Bill.)