[steve]

It’s a far cry from the days of Andrew Edwards doing a non-stop four speech programme as I remember from snow days of old. West Yorkshire’s roads were in chaos from lunchtime for a few hours, but that just wasn’t reflected on air. Sad.

[Andrew]

It’s a far cry from the days of Andrew Edwards doing a non-stop four speech programme as I remember from snow days of old. West Yorkshire’s roads were in chaos from lunchtime for a few hours, but that just wasn’t reflected on air. Sad.

A complete catalogue of errors, have a listen back to Toby Foster on BBC Radio Leeds this afternoon

www.bbc.co.uk 

Toby Foster on BBC Radio Leeds - 08/02/2024 - BBC Sounds
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  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

At 2:03pm the news was cut off by two things playing at once, which then became the Radio Sheffield extended travel bulletin (read very repetitively it has to be said) and then after a sting, a load of dead air

At 2:30pm and again at 3:30pm we got the very start of the Radio Sheffield travel bulletin, followed by newsreader Clive Settle doing the Radio Leeds travel bulletin, with no bed and in a very newsreader style. I’m guessing Clive has never done the travel before. It seemed to basically just consist of Clive muting the Sheffield output and talking in the silent gap.

A bit of dead air around 3:03pm

Go back 5 years you would have had Toby Foster doing a proper service for Sheffield rather than being scared to mention the city, someone like Liz Green doing a proper service for Leeds, and quality travel bulletins from Inrix. It’s sad to see how far the standard has dropped.

[Steve in Pudsey]

From what I can gather the weather has been a non-event in north Yorkshire, so not quite sure what the Radio York listeners would have made of the output they got.

[Brekkie]

Do RAJAR only report BBC Local Radio as a whole or are specific station ratings available?

[Spencer]

Do RAJAR only report BBC Local Radio as a whole or are specific station ratings available?

They provide both a total BBC LR set of figures, and for the stations individually.

www.rajar.co.uk 

RAJAR
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They also publish more detailed, quarter-hourly breakdowns of figures across the day, but these aren’t released to the public.

[all new phil]

A complete catalogue of errors, have a listen back to Toby Foster on BBC Radio Leeds this afternoon

www.bbc.co.uk 

At 2:03pm the news was cut off by two things playing at once, which then became the Radio Sheffield extended travel bulletin (read very repetitively it has to be said) and then after a sting, a load of dead air

At 2:30pm and again at 3:30pm we got the very start of the Radio Sheffield travel bulletin, followed by newsreader Clive Settle doing the Radio Leeds travel bulletin, with no bed and in a very newsreader style. I’m guessing Clive has never done the travel before. It seemed to basically just consist of Clive muting the Sheffield output and talking in the silent gap.

A bit of dead air around 3:03pm

Go back 5 years you would have had Toby Foster doing a proper service for Sheffield rather than being scared to mention the city, someone like Liz Green doing a proper service for Leeds, and quality travel bulletins from Inrix. It’s sad to see how far the standard has dropped.

Worth pointing out the much less-resourced commercial stations manage all these splits and opts with ease.

[Brekkie]

They provide both a total BBC LR set of figures, and for the stations individually.

www.rajar.co.uk 

They also publish more detailed, quarter-hourly breakdowns of figures across the day, but these aren’t released to the public.

Thanks. It's that hourly breakdown per station which would reveal the true impact of the changes over the last year and more.

[Spencer]

It’s a far cry from the days of Andrew Edwards doing a non-stop four speech programme as I remember from snow days of old. West Yorkshire’s roads were in chaos from lunchtime for a few hours, but that just wasn’t reflected on air. Sad.

You’ve reminded me of one time when I worked there in the mid to late 90s, and major, heavy snow was forecast for West Yorkshire overnight, so the whole breakfast show was planned around this, with reporters stationed around the county. I think at least one was put up in a remote B&B to ensure they could be on location from 6am.

Not a flake of snow fell.

And so the whole show was a series of links to reporters describing how there was none of the expected snow where they were. It was excruciating. Although hard to imagine such effort going into BBC LR programming these days.

[Former Member 2410]

In Canada, CBC Radio One is a mix of local, provincial / regional and national, depending on the day / time.

For example, the only 'local' shows in Newfoundland and Labrador are the morning shows: St. John's Morning, Labrador Morning, and CBC Newfoundland Morning (which covers Central and West-coast Newfoundland - this is a merger of the two previous shows for both areas). There are province-wide shows, such as The Broadcast, The Signal and On The Go, and then the rest is national. There's a couple of regional (Atlantic) shows at the weekend too, but these are generally to cover the fact that the Atlantic and Newfoundland time zones are behind Eastern and therefore have 'time to fill' when joining network.

It works well, and is a pretty decent listen through the day. But it's not the same in other provinces and territories, with some having more 'local' shows to suit different areas. CBC Radio One in Quebec and NWT are good examples as they have splits to suit indigenous communities / areas. A nice table is listed on Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBC_Radio_One#CBC_Radio_One_stations

For me, as much as I'd love local shows on BBC Local Radio to go back to how they were (the 2006 re-launch of BBC Radio Manchester being a personal highlight for me - bold, big and very local), it's not going to happen. I think the best plan now would be to move towards the CBC Radio One model: i.e., merge BBC Local Radio with Five Live and put the resulting station on the FM local frequencies in England - have local breakfast, lunch, drive shows and local sports or other local shows when there's no local sport. But also allow the local managers to make the decisions on how local to be and when, within reason. Take Five Live off medium-wave where possible (or make it entirely DAB in Scotland, Wales, NI), use the cash saved from that to plough back into the local aspects of the new stations and make them as good as they can be.

And they need to re-vamp local news on the web - BBC Manchester's 'Local Updates' section (www.bbc.co.uk ) is 90% sport (and 80% of that, at least, is football), and has been for a long time. I'm not interested in sport so it's not for me, and a mess to pick out the non-sport stories, As much as I get the arguments from both sides surrounding what role the BBC should play in local news, they could do better even within a limited remit. Other areas may differ, I'll be honest and say I don't know.

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[cityprod]

The problem with this idea, as good and sensible as it is, is that its a short term solution to a long term problem. That problem, is the fact that over the years we have become conditioned to think local = bad, national = good. Whether that be television or radio, "local" seems to be a dirty word. We don't need national programmes on local radio. We need to recondition the people to not automatical think that local is bad.