[Steve in Pudsey]

The ability of opt for big stories has to include the resources to cover them properly. It's been said that such stories will be covered in the regional programmes, but I have to wonder how that will work in practice?

Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning, your station is taking a breakfast show from the station to the south of you and mid morning from the station to the north. There's one newsreader on shift tasked with putting out hourly bulletins comprising of GNS content and a few pre-prepared clips about local diary stories. The local football team are playing away so the sports team aren't in the building other than a BA who will drive the desk for the OB.

Some incident occurs. It's important but wouldn't be of interest beyond the local area. Local radio would cover it but regional TV wouldn't be interested.

How do you cover it?

[Toby brown]

The obvious thing is for local BBC Radio to target the service towards displaced radio 2 listeners.

Perhaps then they could get away with doing even more networking and you could have kept ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon’ on air in England as long as they kept local news and the ability to opt out for big local stories.

Steve Wright in the afternoon was way past its sell by date Steve himself admitted it was time to move on

[interestednovice]

The ability of opt for big stories has to include the resources to cover them properly. It's been said that such stories will be covered in the regional programmes, but I have to wonder how that will work in practice?

Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning, your station is taking a breakfast show from the station to the south of you and mid morning from the station to the north. There's one newsreader on shift tasked with putting out hourly bulletins comprising of GNS content and a few pre-prepared clips about local diary stories. The local football team are playing away so the sports team aren't in the building other than a BA who will drive the desk for the OB.

Some incident occurs. It's important but wouldn't be of interest beyond the local area. Local radio would cover it but regional TV wouldn't be interested.

How do you cover it?

I imagine an overeliance on social media and, possibly, listeners phoning in with reaction after a messy opt-out from whatever programme was airing pan-regionally. Either that or ignore the incident entirely, depending on severity. Of course, when coverage ends, a messy “crash back in” to shared programming would also be inevitable.

Similar, frankly, to how the BBC News channel now has to cover “minor” UK news. That also isn’t exactly smooth from the perspective of the audience.

[Stooky Bill]

The ability of opt for big stories has to include the resources to cover them properly. It's been said that such stories will be covered in the regional programmes, but I have to wonder how that will work in practice?

Picture the scene. It's Saturday morning, your station is taking a breakfast show from the station to the south of you and mid morning from the station to the north. There's one newsreader on shift tasked with putting out hourly bulletins comprising of GNS content and a few pre-prepared clips about local diary stories. The local football team are playing away so the sports team aren't in the building other than a BA who will drive the desk for the OB.

Some incident occurs. It's important but wouldn't be of interest beyond the local area. Local radio would cover it but regional TV wouldn't be interested.

How do you cover it?

Thing is that at the moment unless the incident has happened to the presenter or producer directly it doesn't really make much of difference if they're in the studio in the same county or the one at the other side of the region. They're still just in a studio relying on eyewitnesses phoning in and the usual social media and news wires etc for information. The only real difference is the presenter is less likely to have local knowledge of the area, but it's not guaranteed that a local presenter would either. 

On Saturday morning there's probably only 3 people in the building now - there's no one to send to it unless they call someone in. If they did that they'd just work into the regional show

It doesn't matter that it's not of interest to other people in the region, if that were the case there'd be no point in regional TV or radio. Everyone's used to hearing news about other parts of the country on both local and nafional radio. Plus if it was a major incident it would be still of interest to a lot of those in neighbouring counties.... we don't all stay within county borders 

Not that I'm trying to defend the changes, but it's perfectly possible to do

[Steve in Pudsey]

The question is whether there will still be people who can be called in next time York floods to mount a sustained emergency service. And whether the people of North Derbyshire want to hear about it

[Stooky Bill]

The question is whether there will still be people who can be called in next time York floods to mount a sustained emergency service. And whether the people of North Derbyshire want to hear about it

If they are true to their plans they aren't lowering the numbers of staff, just moving roles from Radio to 'digital' (hate that phrase) so officially there will be. If they've not all left

Thing is that having extra programmes for something like a flood is different to covering an 'incident'. As I say the latter is covered mainly by eyewitnesses phoning in and if you're lucky colleagues who are nearby. 

Coverage of flooding goes on for a day or 2 so can be arranged - it's not breaking news (especially in some areas where it can be predicted) . However as you say will there be enough people for that? Most stations will only have 2 or 3 presenters and a handful of  production staff working on their programmes. There will be other journalists of course, and you'd hope there'd regularly be reporters and producers in York contributing items to the regional programmes. 

However if they wanted to do a few days of local they'd maybe need some overtime from those left and freelance staff (as they do now in those circumstances) will the goodwill be there any more. That's something some management fail to understand - the need to keep the goodwill of your staff so when you want favours they'll be willing

[Technologist]

All BBC journalists are meant to be bi if not tri media ..
Thus as the number is the same. .. events will be covered ..
But may not be on radio first ….

[Former Member 406]

All BBC journalists are meant to be bi

When I'd only got this far into your first sentence, I wondered where it was going... 🏳️‍🌈

[Steve in Pudsey]

twitter.com 

So Toby moves back to afternoons but regionally networked.

Doesn't feel like the most ridiculous decision they could have made, I'm sure it will be a better listen then when they experimented with networking Liz Green's phone in a few years ago. It's got a chance of being successful

[jf1701]

Another Radio Gloucestershire long tenure presenter has announced they are leaving in July.

BBC Radio Gloucestershire's long-serving breakfast show host is to leave the corporation.
Mark Cummings is leaving after 18 years on the show amid "huge" changes to local BBC radio.
The news comes a week after the station's mid-morning presenter, Anna King, also announced she was to leave.

www.bbc.co.uk 

Mark Cummings: Presenter to leave BBC Radio Gloucestershire - BBC News
Mark Cummings announces he is to leave BBC Radio Gloucestershire after 18 years …
  Source: www.bbc.co.uk