[Keith]

The plan is for every region to go HD, if these macro regions are happening (and the phrase 'Clean Feed has confirmed' doesn't mean much) then they'll either be temporary or a bit of a bodge in the interim.

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Surely more logical for 2 to be Plymouth (HD studio), 3 to be Southampton (HD studio), and 5 to be Saford (HD studio).

I'd have thought that if this is happening that the choice of region would be based on its importance and size of region and not the specs of the studio. 

Newcastle has an HD studio now too, but Salford is more logical because of it bigger population

I'm guessing when rolling out HD feeds for BBC One English regions its easier to initially roll out 5 new variations, instead of all at once. Rolling out one at a time would also be a bit problematic, as it would rely on retaining the red death screen during the local news until the last region had been converted and there would be complaints about regional favouritism. It presumably also makes it a bit easier to manage any teething problems.

Presumably once the split into 5 macro regions has been done the next step is for each of those macro regions to be split again into their proper regions. I wouldn't be too surprised if they did this one or two macro regions at a time over a few weeks to make the task more manageable.