[ViridianFan]

Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland all have a single “nations” local news programme (instead of regional news) and a “nations” radio station (instead of local radio as in England). Arguably this is partly due to population size.

They get other services which English regions don’t though, such as BBC One and BBC Two opts and some extra radio stations - BBC Radio Cymru and Cymru 2, for example.

It’s just how things have evolved over time, I think, and not part of a deliberate strategy. It’s not like somebody sat down in 1950 and said “let’s set things up like this”.

When you look at the population of Scotland, there are only two english regions (not bbc regions) with smaller populations, that being the East Midlands and the north east. Scotland, wales and North Ireland are effectively the size of a regional news. When you think back to the 1999 rebrand, they were branded in the same style as the English regions with only the music being different. After they’ve always tried to align more with the national look than the regional.

With the cuts being made it’s surely going to become increasingly difficult to justify a separate channel when there are larger population areas which aren’t getting the same bespoke channel. You argue that the differences between many of the English regions is just as great as it is between Scotland and England and have just as strong sense of regional identity.

As others have said, it would make sense to change it back and make use of the opt out