[i.h]

The operations may be big, but they’re not at all local. Which is surely the point.

Depends on what you want. I'd say those three HQs offer more to their respective areas than the BBC English Regions are allowed to do. It's been said that BBC English regional news & LR is a good incubator for talent, well surely having numerous TV and radio stations, more scheduling flexibility on BBC1/2, local orchestras etc takes that to an even greater level - even if it does mean Tenby or Aberystwyth don't have a BBC local radio station. How could someone like Limmy (for example) get anywhere in England if they weren't in London or Manchester? He got commissioned by BBC Scotland however.

and in terms of language - Cornish gets some very token effort on BBC Radio Cornwall & nothing on Spotlight, whereas Wales, Scotland and NI have entire stations dedicated to theirs.

[Newsroom]

It could be also said for Radio Cymru in South Wales where Welsh is a second language taught in schools.

Apologies to go off thread but this needs correcting...

Why the differentiation of South Wales? Welsh is taught either first or second language in all schools across the whole of Wales!

(There is sometimes a weird theory in England that South Wales is more 'Welsh' than North Wales. In fact Welsh is spoken just as much in the North as it is the South, maybe even more in the North.)

Cardiff is home to the greatest population of welsh speakers, followed by those living in Carmarthenshire, Gwynedd and Anglesey. So that tells you it’s the mid belt of Wales that has the lowest area of welsh speakers. Those speaking Welsh is on the increase in data released just last month.

[DTV]

The operations may be big, but they’re not at all local. Which is surely the point.

Depends on what you want. I'd say those three HQs offer more to their respective areas than the BBC English Regions are allowed to do. It's been said that BBC English regional news & LR is a good incubator for talent, well surely having numerous TV and radio stations, more scheduling flexibility on BBC1/2, local orchestras etc takes that to an even greater level - even if it does mean Tenby or Aberystwyth don't have a BBC local radio station. How could someone like Limmy (for example) get anywhere in England if they weren't in London or Manchester? He got commissioned by BBC Scotland however.

I think that the issue is that fundamentally 'local' news in England and in the three nations are two completely different things. Reporting Scotland, Wales Today and Newsline are, in large part, national news bulletins that primarily cover similar topics (i.e, politics/policy) to the main network bulletins, just focussed on one area and without international news. The kinds of local stories that make up the bulk of English regional bulletins are usually a second-tier story for the nations and, as such, viewers in the nations do no get that same local news provision as viewers in England.

Obviously, this is a function of the massive imbalance in regional government in the UK. The nations' programmes have to cover the devolved political institutions, while there is no meaningful decentralised government within England. There would be no need for the English regions to have the ability to produce political opt-outs as the nations do simply because there is nothing really to cover.

If you were starting from scratch, probably the sensible thing would be to have a three-stage process - first you have a single network bulletin covering international and UK-wide news; then the nations opt out to do Sc/Wa/NI political stories, leaving London to cover England-wide stories; finally everybody opts out to provide local news. But I suspect creating local news operations within Scotland and Wales would be difficult to justify given cutbacks in England.

[London Lite]

What I've found when I watch ITV Wales's main bulletin is they of course cover the Welsh Parliament, then it becomes a semi-local service for South Wales especially in the area between Swansea and Newport and then like circa Newsroom South East when they'd slot in an Oxfordshire story on a Londoncentric bulletin, they do a token story from North Wales, usually from Wrexham or Colwyn Bay.

[London Lite]

Look East has been from Cambridge this weekend.

[Worzel]

Look East has been from Cambridge this weekend.

Not sure who the presenter was but it looked like they'd never ever read the news or used an autocue before.

You'd hope that while they have 2 separate studios and galleries in use, they'd use the opportunity wisely and refit the Norwich set and upgrade the kit whilst coming from Cambridge in the meantime. But that might be too logical.

[Stooky Bill]

Worth noting that I believe Radio Cambridgeshire also operates out of the same building.  They'd also learnt of their radio cuts the same day, which included 2-6pm being a shared programme with Norfolk/Suffolk/3CR.  Additionally, Sally Chidzoy's tweet seems to imply there's staff shortages already, presumably as any staff who've already handed in their notice won't have been replaced.

Interestingly only a few months ago, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire were recruiting for several broadcast journalists. Got to feel sorry for those who took the jobs, and may likely be out of work in a few months time.

Possibly not, the changes seem to mainly be around radio output - less radio, more 'digital' output - social media, podcasts etc. Most redundancies will be presenters, producers, BAs etc although a lot of them will be able to be redeployed. 

The 40 or so post closures are mainly through the loss of English TV current affairs - This Is England has been axed and won't be replaced

---

and in terms of language - Cornish gets some very token effort on BBC Radio Cornwall & nothing on Spotlight, whereas Wales, Scotland and NI have entire stations dedicated to theirs.

That's not really a fair comparison, Cornish is far less spoken than Welsh or Gaelic. It was once virtually extinct and although its seen a bit of a renasssiance the numbers are few - too low to warrant much more broadcast time than it gets

I know one community station in Cornwall does a weekly show in Cornish. How much of a following it has I don't know

[Keith]

Look East has been from Cambridge this weekend.

Not sure who the presenter was but it looked like they'd never ever read the news or used an autocue before.

You'd hope that while they have 2 separate studios and galleries in use, they'd use the opportunity wisely and refit the Norwich set and upgrade the kit whilst coming from Cambridge in the meantime. But that might be too logical.

Does anyone know if the lunchtime and evening Look East came from Norwich today? I agree, it would make sense to use the next month to upgrade the Norwich studio whilst the Cambridge is still operational.

[watchingtv]

Not sure who the presenter was but it looked like they'd never ever read the news or used an autocue before.

You'd hope that while they have 2 separate studios and galleries in use, they'd use the opportunity wisely and refit the Norwich set and upgrade the kit whilst coming from Cambridge in the meantime. But that might be too logical.

Does anyone know if the lunchtime and evening Look East came from Norwich today? I agree, it would make sense to use the next month to upgrade the Norwich studio whilst the Cambridge is still operational.

Lunchtime Norwich.
Evening split.

[m_in_m]

Not sure who the presenter was but it looked like they'd never ever read the news or used an autocue before.

You'd hope that while they have 2 separate studios and galleries in use, they'd use the opportunity wisely and refit the Norwich set and upgrade the kit whilst coming from Cambridge in the meantime. But that might be too logical.

Does anyone know if the lunchtime and evening Look East came from Norwich today? I agree, it would make sense to use the next month to upgrade the Norwich studio whilst the Cambridge is still operational.

Presumably there is no reason they can't use Cambridge in the New Year - they just won't be able to broadcast from both locations.