New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Pretty much, yes.


In Reigate it is mostly BBC London - the majority of aerials point north to the relay transmitter on Reigate Hill, although some are pointed towards Midhurst to pick up South Today. Heathfield (South East Today) can also be received (well, at least it could in the analogue days, don't know about digital) but I haven't seen any aerials pointed in that direction. Guildford I would have thought would be mostly BBC London as well, seeing as they also have their own relay transmitter. Editorially, though, it has to snow in Reigate before BBC London will ever dare coming this far down!

Aerials in Guildford use either the town's relay, or Crystal Palace. Both London region transmitters.

I'm told that Sky and Freesat EPG mapping in the town is South Today, and not London. The Guildford relay is used by many viewers deep into SW London, so that's why it is always likely to remain tied to London.

You don't need to travel very far southwards or westwards away from Guidford, before some aerials start looking at Hannington or Midhurst (both ST Txs), although if the terrain allows, Crystal Palace is still the default choice for most.

It does amuse me, that the Olympic torch route around the south seems to have been selected to cross back and forth regional boundaries as much as it possibly can !

Reigate got a mention in today's BBC London News bulletin at lunchtime. As far as ITV London are concerned, it returns to their region when it's in Gravesend.

(Also posted in the Olympic Torch TV Coverage thread)

Cheers for the info, people.

So, ST's claim to Guildford is perhaps a bit debatable, then?

They obviously just wanted to claim to be the final region to have the torch, pre-London. (Assuming ST's claim to Guildford is agreeable, then in terms of the Torch entering actual "county" (or whatever type of thing is!) of Greater London itself, ST's claim is accurate).

I wonder whether SET also made the same claim? (e.g. on the basis that the Torch would enter some "London TV region"-only parts of Surrey, albeit not Greater London itself, immediately after leaving the SET patch).

At least with the pan-regional latter half of Meridian Tonight, the "last-region-before-London" claim is definitely true, regardless of exactly where in Kent and/or Surrey it left the overall Meridian patch for the final time!

ST once again stayed on the air throughout all the 18:57-ish trailers, up until the start of the BBC One ident into The One Show. They made a slightly cleaner job of it than on Monday though. ST itself briefly cut to a full-screen looped gold-and-black background (derived from the Torch Relay trailers), with a "BBC South" copyright caption on a namestrap. Audio during this was the ambient sound from the Guildford OB quickly faded to silence.

The last torchbearer of the day didn't quite make it to the cauldron whilst ST was still on air. The ST reporter's commentary promised that they would bring us footage of the cauldron-lighting in the 22:25 bulletin. Not the triumphant climax to the programme that they'd hoped for, then!

South Today's claim to Guildford's torch coverage was fair enough considering that it's a crossover area for their patch and viewers in the SW of the county tend to receive Midhurst rather than Crystal Palace.

Also BBC London were right to cover the event as Guildford is a relay of CP and viewers in the majority of Surrey receive the bulletin.

Both BBC London and ITV London decided to start covering the relay again once the torch went into Gravesend, which is the south eastern boundary of their editorial boundary (although both London regions cover further east on the other side of the estuary in Essex). I didn't watch SET, but Sky and Freesat customers in Dartford and Gravesend receive SET on 101 rather than BBC London, so would have featured on their bulletin.

More region-stretching from South Today tonight.

Given that even ST's usual editorial inclusion of Weymouth & Portland really is at the westernmost limit of what they can possibly claim to cover, I was surprised to see tonight's lead story tonight was from near Bridport - Well and truly Spotlight-exclusive territory, surely?

The report package ended before the outcue, and Sally Taylor in the studio retrospectively name-checked the reoprter. So, presumably a Spotlight report was used, and that a re-dubbed "South Today"-branded edit wasn't available.

ST's sports reporter will be based in Weymouth throughout the Olympics. During his OB on last night's programme, he acknowledged that "our colleagues from BBC Plymouth" were also doing the same thing! The camera swung round, and he pointed at the Press Area where Spotlight were seemingly doing a simultaneous OB.

Except I don't think they were ! I watched large chunks of Spotlight last night, and the only live reports were from Burton Bradstock (aka Bridport) and Brixham. There was a recorded interview from Weymouth (not Olympics related)

Sorry, just to clarify, as my previous post perhaps reads rather confusingly...

My first two paragraphs were referring to ST on Tuesday 24th July (the lead news story in question being about a landslip tragedy on the Dorset coast).

Whereas my latter two paragraphs (about the sports OB) were referring to the previous night's ST (i.e. Monday 23rd July). That's when ST showed their "Plymouth colleagues" apparently doing the same thing. It occurred during the latter half of Monday's ST.

I don't know at what point(s) during Monday's Spotlight any such OB may have occurred, if at all. It's perfectly possible that the BBC Plymouth crew were merely physically present (e.g. packing up from recording an item earlier in the day), but not necessarily actually broadcasting live on Spotlight during the time that ST's OB was taking place, I suppose.

Tonight's ST was mainly an OB from Osborne House (on the Isle of Wight) with Sally Taylor, with a brief news round up in the middle of the programme with Laura Trant in the Southampton studio.

When Sally handed over to the studio, Laura welcomed viewers from the Oxford sub-region, explaining that their own programme wasn't airing due to a power failure.

Does anyone know whether BBC Oxford was, say, okay for 17:59 ident/18:00 & 18:15 headlines/start of programme at 18:30 (then crashing off air shortly afterwards), or whether some/all of the above just never came to air at all?

The ST news roundup editorially included one or two news stories from the Oxford sub-region.

EDIT: Thinking about the structure of tonight's ST, it's just occurred to me that any Oxford opt would have been due to also take place in the middle of the programme, not at 18:30, with the OB being pan-regional regardless! Doh!

However, there still may have been an Oxford headline opt-out due, in-between Sally's OB welcome and the opening titles (perhaps even separate Oxford titles were due in place of the ST ones, then mixing to the same live person-free vista of Osborne House used on ST). Anyone know whether any such little bits of Oxford separateness managed to air at all?

Oxford didn't opt at all tonight. The substation next to the Radio Oxford building is currently out of action. Probably not going to be fixed for a few hours I understand.

Thanks for that.

It did at least allow Sally to name-check Laura when handing over to her, rather than just ambiguously handing over to "the studio" to allow for different opts.

It seems that BBC regional news programmes only ever put their 18:30 editions on iPlayer (correct?). Given that BBC Oxford clearly had no such bulletin today, I wonder whether they'll put tonight's 22:25 bulletin (if it happens!) on the iPlayer from, say 23:00 tonight until 19:00 tomorrow?

Did BBC Radio Oxford manage to stay on the air last night ?