[interestednovice]

They’ve made it work, but it’s overall compromised programme quality as the regional set looks poor on screen. TC7 at TVC, or the theoretical alternative of Studio B at NBH, would look better to the viewer and would undoubtedly have cost less.

“Greater Manchester” is an artificial construct: the programme comes from Salford. Salford is a small regional location, compared to neighbouring Liverpool and Manchester. Don’t read too much into my Rouen example - I simply picked an example to illustrate my “small location” point. It’s a valid point.

[Roger Darthwell]

Exactly, there is a 24/7 international newsgathering operation across the globe. But it feeds into a single “base” which is NBH in London. That’s logical and the only real way to run a news organisation - a single major HQ newsgathering “base”.

It is logical, and less costly, to have your programme teams based in the same physical location and produce your news programmes there.

As others have said, it makes little difference on screen (although actually small changes such as being able to more easily present on location at iconic places in London may be possible with a London-based programme, which would be a small positive impact) where the programme comes from, so if it saves money it makes sense to base it in London.

Nobody has presented a reasoned argument to refute that logic, in my view. I never said that London was the centre of the universe, that is others putting words in my mouth. But clearly, it is our capital city. Most global broadcasters present the news from their capital city. It’s the standard, because it’s logical.

Even the “reaching for examples” cases brought up in the thread don’t really follow. The supposed-regional-champion TF1 bulletin still comes from Paris which is actually my whole point - you don’t need to move a programme to make it “not capital city centric” (and, by the way, billboards of a presenter are a common French ad technique which you see all the time); Australia is a very unusual country as I outlined before and I can’t think of any other examples anywhere else in the word.

Breakfast coming from Salford is like TF1 presenting their morning news from Rouen. It would be very strange indeed.

Even more so when the only studio available in that location, apparently, is basically a cupboard.

Another example like Australia could be Canada as well, you made the example of ABC News (Australia) programmes being presented from all over the country, and I mean the CBC's main evening news programme, called The National is hosted from Toronto during the week and from Vancouver during weekends, and CBC News as a whole has programmes coming from Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal (in case of Radio-Canada) and Halifax, and just like Australia, Canada is also a big and varied country

[qwerty123]

They’ve made it work, but it’s overall compromised programme quality as the regional set looks poor on screen. TC7 at TVC, or the theoretical alternative of Studio B at NBH, would look better to the viewer and would undoubtedly have cost less.

“Greater Manchester” is an artificial construct: the programme comes from Salford. Salford is a small regional location, compared to neighbouring Liverpool and Manchester. Don’t read too much into my Rouen example - I simply picked an example to illustrate my “small location” point. It’s a valid point.

To the vast majority of the country Salford is no more a separate city to Manchester than Westminster is to London.

[DTV]

I'm not really sure it would cost less to produce in London. Other than the travel costs for non-Salford based presenters (which aren't huge, and there'd still be travel costs involved were they presenting in London), there is no extra cost to it being produced in Salford. In fact, overall staffing costs are likely lower as I imagine that, like many employers, the BBC pay London weighting. Per person, again not huge, but for entire production and studio teams is probably quite a decent saving.

You say there's no need for it to be produced outside London, but the same is true in reverse. It has never been easier to produce a news programme outside of the central newsgathering base - VTs and any other assorted London-produced items can be sent over instantly - so it's not like it impedes production in any meaningful way. So why not? Especially as it helps the BBC meet out-of-London targets. Ultimately, producing Breakfast in Salford isn't difficult to do, is an easy political win and, as others have mentioned, has other benefits, such as to regional job opportunities.

[DTV]

They’ve made it work, but it’s overall compromised programme quality as the regional set looks poor on screen. TC7 at TVC, or the theoretical alternative of Studio B at NBH, would look better to the viewer and would undoubtedly have cost less.

Sure, the current set and studio aren't great, but I'd say that it's actually a better set for the programme than the one they had in TC7 during their final London years - which was barren, cavenous and often starkly lit. The Salford set may look a bit cramped, but you could argue that combined with the warm lighting gives a slightly 'cosy' vibe, which may be what they were going for. It's not ideal, but luckily there's not long left with it now.

[itsrobert]

We are in a time of ruthless cutbacks at the BBC, which are severely affecting services and output quality. Having programming scattered around the place, just to give vague “opportunities” across the country, is a luxury we cannot afford. Better to save the money, and reinvest it in other areas so we don’t have to have such deep and impactful cuts.

So, you want to save money by relocating all news production to London at huge expense? That sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. As DTV has rightly pointed out, salaries are a lot lower in Northern England so they are bound to be saving money there.

Also, this is unfair to staff in London who have already been hit hard by news restructuring. I know it’s fashionable to hate on London, but it’s not logical.

I'm not 'hating on London' at all. I've probably visited London more often than any other city in the UK outside of my immediate area. What I do hate is the 'everything of importance happens in London' attitude that some people seem to hold.

Most Breakfast arts features are sit-down interviews taped at another time (probably because most big name artists, etc, don’t want to be on TV live at 6am) whereas politics and other such stories tend to be live from Westminster or other key locations in London. During the pandemic, everybody has become used to “down the line” interviews and this is a way to involve people from all over the place without the need for the physical studio to be in the same location as the contributor. It’s not a fair criticism (or accurate one) to argue that everyone who appears on London-based programmes is from London or presents a London-centric point of view.

You are right that the pandemic aided the inclusion of contributors from around the world, but a poor internet connection is no substitute for an in-studio discussion. 

What I should have said in my last post was that it's the reporters easily going out to northern schools, factories, hospitals and towns generally that has been the biggest benefit of having Breakfast in Salford. Giving northern people a voice is not a 'luxury' but a necessity in my opinion. They're not getting the full HS2 railway that was originally promised, nor much investment from central government, so at least let them have their voices heard.

So, to end as you start, “I guess you’re from Manchester then?”!

No, I'm not.

[Stuart]

“Greater Manchester” is an artificial construct: the programme comes from Salford. Salford is a small regional location, compared to neighbouring Liverpool and Manchester.

Greater Manchester is not an 'artificial construct', it's a metropolitain county made up of 10 unitary boroughs. The City of Salford and the City of Manchester are two of them.

I wouldn't describe MediaCityUK as a 'small regional location'.

[Kunst]

Linguistically too, the Manchester accent and its dialect features, cover around the same area as Greater Manchester

[London Lite]

Greater Manchester is not an 'artificial construct', it's a metropolitain county made up of 10 unitary boroughs. The City of Salford and the City of Manchester are two of them.

I wouldn't describe MediaCityUK as a 'small regional location'.

Indeed, Manchester is the UK's third biggest city and I think the UK's second biggest media hub with the BBC and ITV having facilities in Salford.

The whole Manchester/Salford thing is nonsense. Croydon for example is a town in it's own right similar to the city of Salford, but also part of London which has it's own London wide authority as well as the 32 boroughs.

[kookaburra]

I’d argue that ABC being very decentralised reflects Australia in general.

While Canberra is the capital city, Sydney is the most significant media base for most broadcasters. Australia in general has the vast majority of the population concentrated in/around 5 major cities across the country. It also has several time zones. Catering to all of this means it may make sense to make extensive use of bases across the country.

News in Australia is also very different, generally. The country is quite parochial. Apart from most having a bit of interest in British affairs, due to our long historical connections, most Australians really don’t care very much about international news. In fact, they primarily care about regional/local news and this gets higher viewing figures than national news programmes. Their “news diet” is therefore different and the way ABC produce news reflects that.

I’d argue we are in the opposite position. The country is physically, geographically small so is only one time zone. London is a traditional capital city, where pretty much every company would have it’s UK HQ. Other news, whether political, the arts or whatever, really tends to originate from London. It therefore makes huge sense to have a centralised news department there.

Salford should have a basic North West Tonight/Today operation like every other region, at low cost. Breakfast should come from London, and the News at One should also. The idea of having part of the same team produce both is more an argument for Breakfast to return to London than for the One to move to Salford.

Why is having things randomly not in London regarded as a “Good Thing” when it creates inefficiencies, costs more and results in little difference to the viewer (often arguably a downgrade)?

In fact, at a time of such cuts in news at the BBC, cuts which are severely affecting the quality of output, how can such extravagance possibly be justified?

Australian here. I think the ABC and the BBC have different strengths and weaknesses in terms of their respective decentralisation efforts. 

In terms of population, it’s Melbourne and Sydney then daylight. Melbourne always had a large TV sector, but that has progressively moved to Sydney in the last 10 years (for the worse). It looks like to an outsider, Salford started with nothing while Melbourne always had that capacity. The audience didn’t lose anything in terms of talent or production values with programming coming from Melbourne. 

You also in effect have two cultures in Australia - AFL states and non AFL states. This means the media needs to reflect the football codes of their respective cities. 

News is very different in Australia. We obviously have more commercial broadcasters so the ABC either operates as a standard bearer or a market failure broadcaster. It’s also the only source for decent world news. In the last 15-20 years the big commercial broadcasters, Seven and Nine got much more tabloid and mostly focus on celebrity nonsense. To the point where LA is the location for their US bureaus. ABC is in Washington. 

Sorry to be the one to knock some colonial assumptions on the head but there’s not much interest in the UK. If it is, it’s a story of global significance or a long form report on falling living standards and the mess of brexit. Overseas reporting is dominated by Asia, the pacific and lazy US politics stories. 

News Breakfast was already going from Melbourne before the news channel started. It’s a useful point of difference to the commercials that both come from Sydney and are quite down market. Insiders, the Sunday political show is made in Melbourne because that’s where the first host lived and there was an effort to be out of Canberra. The new host lives in Canberra and the show is moving there permanently in the near future to save on costs. 

The ABC used to have ABC Asia Pacific/Australia network which was funded by the department of foreign affairs until the conservatives killed it in 2013. Melbourne was always the home for that. Melbourne still has the ‘Asia pacific’ newsroom which makes content for ABC Australia (the current international broadcast service). 

Australia doesn’t really have national news bulletins like the UK does. The nightly flagship on the ABC and commercials are all state based. The ABC tried and failed to shift to a BBC style national and news where you are in the 80s or 90s. Even daytime morning and afternoon news for the pensioners on commercial networks are now all local. There’s bulletin of course have a mix of local, national and world news. 

Radio National (similar to R4)’S flagship show, RN Breakfast also comes from Melbourne but that’s just because that’s where the host lives.

Despite all this, the ABC is still incredibly Sydney centric and cops a lot of criticism for it, from me included. This was particularly evident during the covid lockdowns and ABC news online has scant coverage of state affairs out of Sydney/NSW. 

Saying that, you look at ABC News Tasmania, NT or ACT and it’s basically has polished as ABC News Victoria. The regions on the BBC look…regional. But that’s their role in a hybrid national/local model.