[Keith]

Not surprising they've rejected it, just adding a couple of weekend shows doesn't make any difference to the awful proposals.

Being sceptical/cynical I wonder if the BBC might reinstate a few more hours of local/regional programming once enough of the longer serving staff have taken voluntary redundancy and left. In theory the longer serving staff are likely to be paid more than newer staff and/or are on more generous older contracts.

If the cuts were that counties who had the same regional TV news shared radio programming it would be more acceptable. However, from the previous page it looks like the plan is for multiple regions to share, which feels like a much bigger stretch. Those might be fine for the 5-6am hour and acceptable for 10pm to 1am, the latter I gather is supposed to become a single UK feed.