[Stooky Bill]

Coventry and Warwickshire only existed as an opt-out of WM from 1995-2005, so this should be nothing new for listeners in that part of the country. And although the Stoke/Shropshire/H&W grouping is awkward, it's probably no worse than the original Shropshire/H&W/CWR proposal.

Until Covid came along and shook up the schedules, Shropshire, H&W and Stoke had shared programmes every weekend (although I think there was one programme, possibly Shropshire's Folk Music show that went out only in DAB on Stoke, something like that). 

It's not that strange a pairing on a map and Shropshire and H&W have a lot in common. Stoke is always the outlier, it's kind of Midlands region but kind of North West region and covers Cheshire too

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Radio Devon is a right old mess, so we have afternoon drive covered from Radio Cornwall  titled the David White show  which when i finish work and tune in has nothing local, David white bangs on about werid news stories or a random mixtape  and when i say random  yesterday was about soap operas ??? i mean surely  if you want yo do a mixtape you would be able to keep it Devon and Cornwall related at least?  and werid news its random rubbish off the internet from all over the world?  why???

This is part of the problem, what they should be doing it having a shared programme which has content about all the areas it covers. They should be open with it and have items about Devon and Cornwall. But they're not, they're going for generic items that have no local appeal as they've been told not to mention where they're broadcasting to. 

That said my local station and presumably many others have been doing that sort of thing for a few years now. The covid schedules made everything into 4 hour programmes which were all local and all solo presenter. They had real problems filling all that time. A lot of the programmes especially at the weekend were full of filler. 

For some parts of the schedule shared programmes are a good thing, but they have to be decently produced. The weekend shared programmes which were specialist music worked well for example. Over covid my local shared some afternoons due to lack of staff, even at the last minute they were better than the permanant ones now