Is there a demand for this service though? IIRC the BBC was providing
"local" news channels through the website but they've since been
removed, I presume because of lack of people watching it.
On 18 Jun 2009, at 12:28, Brian Butterworth wrote:
2009/6/18 Andrew Bowden <andrew.bow...@bbc.co.uk>
Well each one would have a budget of £5m by that estimate. It's
possible, but only if that included satellite and internet
distribution.
Terrestrial just wouldn't be possible with the current transmitter
network.
Thankfully this isn't about the current transmitter network. You
could certainly carry several low-bandwidth news programmes to have
more than one "local news" service on the multiplexes for each
transmitter to provide a more localized service.
For example if you broken the Yorkshire and Humber region into:
* West Yorkshire (Leeds, Bradford, Hudderfield, Halifax)
* South Yorkshire (Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster)
* York and North Yorkshire
* Hull, North and Northeast Linconshire, East Riding
You would have to carry the first two services from Emley Moor and
Sheffield (and relays) because the geography doesn't fit with the
transmitter areas.
If you follow the logic though, I get these services:
Tyne and Wear - Durham and Northumberland - Manchester - Merseyside
and Blackpool - Cumbria and Northwest Counties - West Midlands
Metropolitan - West Midlands Counties (two services, north and
south) - Leicester/Nottingham/Derby - East Midlands Counties (Notts/
Derbys/Lincs/Northamptons/Leictersh/Rutland) - Southampton and
Hampshire - M4 Corridor (Oxford, Reading, Slow, Woking) - Kent East
Sussex and Brighton - Surrey and West Sussex - Bristol, Bath and
Western - Devon and Cornwall - Dorset and Wiltshire - Norfolk and
Suffolk - Essex and Herts - Cambridge and Bedford - Edinburgh and
Glasgow, Highlands and Islands, Rest of Scotland, South Wales Coast
(Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Rhondda) - North and Rural Wales -
Northern Ireland - London South - London North - London East -
London West
I think from my general working out that you would need to carry
between one and four "local" services for each transmitter, usually
two.
It is "doable", and would I think be a better service for all
concerned.
From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk
] On Behalf Of Brian Butterworth
Sent: 18 June 2009 10:49
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] The Final Digital Britain report
The think I have the most of an issue with is the funding of a
regional news programme for ITV.
If you are going to spend £150m (say) of BBC money, it would be
better to break up the BBC regional news service into a network of
BBC local news channels.
For a start it would make sense to supplement BBC London with BBC
Birmingham and BBC Manchester. This would mean BBC West Midlands
and BBC North West becomes a "county" service.
The BBC Scotland service could be split into an urban "central belt"
service for Edinburgh and Glasgow and a "highland and islands"
service (cf. "Grampian region")
The BBC North West service could split into three, one for "Tyne",
one for "Tees" and one for "Cumbria".
BBC North could be BBC West Yorkshire (Leeds, Bradford etc), BBC
South Yorkshire (Sheffield) and BBC North Yorkshire (another
"county" service).
The BBC South region could split as Meridian did, with one for the
Hampshire end and another for Sussex.
And so on. There are 60.9 million people in the UK, so 30 regional
news channels serving a population of about 2 million each would be
"local" news.
It would CLEARLY be better for there to be ONE news programme with
LOCAL news for everyone, than a choice of TWO news programmes that
are REGIONAL.
Any analysis would show that people would benefit more for news of a
more local nature, than a choice of two lots of news that will be
about somewhere that is not local.
The idea of preserving regional news on ITV is nostalgia and not an
analysis of what would benefit the public.
You could clearly get 30 x BBC Local News 24-hour channels from
£150m a year, couldn't you?
2009/6/16 Ian Forrester <ian.forres...@bbc.co.uk>
The Final Digital Britain Report
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx
So what do people think? Time to leave the country or dig a hole and
stick our heads into it?
Cheers,
Ian Forrester
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Brian Butterworth
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web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and
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Brian Butterworth
follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist
web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and
switchover advice, since 2002
