New BBC Regions

Not really - the actual English regions have hardly changed at all - though the move from VHF to UHF changed a few boundaries, especially as some regions main transmitters were relocated.

The major evolutionary changes over the years have been :

The moving of the Cumbria region between Manchester and Newcastle based programmes.

The split of East and West Midlands - initially a sub-opt then a full-opt out of Nottingham.

The addition of a sub-opt for the West of the East region - a sub-opt out of Cambridge.

The addition of a sub-opt, then a full-opt for part of the North (aka Yorks and Lincs) region, out of Hull.

The split of the South East aka London and South East region into an Oxford sub-opt, a full-opt from Tunbridge Wells and a full-opt from London.

The expansion of the Channel Islands service from a 2128 only bulletin to a sub-opt at 1830 and a full 2230 bulletin out of Jersey.

With the exception of the Cumbria issue - all of the other changes have been to increase the "localness" of the news - and the BBC is committed to continuing this. The proposed MK region - which AFAIK is just a re-location and expansion of the current Cambridge sub-opt for the Look East region (and not a merger with the South Today Oxford operation) to match the Anglia News West patch.

And what of the supposed new Scottish regions? Weren't we supposed to be getting a South-West sub-opt as a trial, hopefully expanding to produce maybe Highlands/Grampians area, Central Belt and Southern Scotland opts? While England debates its mini, mini regions, we're stuck with one! And as has been said before RS spends time on mindless stories such as the Shetland bird population just to tick boxes. With a sub-opt, I (and the majority of the Scottish population) would be spared such mindless drivel (and the Shetland Reporter's [John Johnstone] extremely irritating voice...)

scotland has lots of regional variations throughout the day on bbc one and two, as do wales and northern ireland with regional continuity all day.

it would be very selfish for you to expect the licence fee payers of england to subsidise yet more output for scotland whilst there are still anomalies in england, who only have about an hour of regional news/day with 30 min of politics and 30 min documentary a week.

there's no need for english licence payers to spend a penny. just ditch the crap nobody likes - newsnight scotland for example, and use the money that they spend on that.

Plus it would save them having to employ comedy dave to write their headlines to try and make them seem in the slightest bit newsworthy...

they managed to link the bombings on the tube to a decline in the shetland wool economy or something the other week. genius if nothing else

Do I assume then that despite all this discussion about creating further sub-opts in England, that there are still no plans to split BBC Channel Islands off as a separate region?

There is no point broadcasting BBC South West to the Channel Islands, it is not relevant at all to anyone living there and the Plymouth based programme makes virtually no acknowledgement of the fact that they are transmitting to the Channel Islands as well (there are some days when the weather forecast is as much thought as Plymouth give to them). They way things are, they might as well run Spotlight CI as an opt of LDN for all the difference it would make.

Considering that they allready opt out of half of Spotlight, why would it be such a big deal to run for an extra 15 minutes in the evening and fully split the main news programme? And if they're doing that, why can't they split the news service alltogether? They still have to maintain a newsgathering operation and broadcasting facilities on the Islands, and since they are now getting new facilities (I think?), wouldn't it make sense to fully utilise them and stop running it as an opt out of a BBC English region which is never going to pay more than lip service to it.

Of course I realise there would be significant expense involved in doing it, but then the BBC are quite happy to further split English regions to make the news more relevant, surely before they start doing that they should be splitting away the Channel Islands which presently (beyond it's two opts) has to suffer a news service of no relevance at all.

Who said that the English had to pay for it? Like Hymagumba said, ditch NN Scotland and the like and use BBC Scotland funds, I'm sure they could afford it. And, I mean, if the Channel Islands deserves its own show, surely Scotland shouldn't have to put up with only one region! If ITV can manage to give us three completely seperate programmes across the country, surely the BBC could provide opts? (I wouldn't want a dedicated 30 min programme at 1830, purely because we'd end up with three sets of presenters giving drivel rather than one.) Give each region a 10 min opt at 1830 and a seperate 2225 programme, and let the Scottish liscence fee payers provide the funds. At least then the English wouldn't have anything to complain about. (And before this goes anywhere, I'm not trying to start a cross-border feud, mearly trying to justify my point.)

given that england is home to 83.7% of the uk population whilst scotland is home to only 8.5%, it seems plainly obvious to me that the wealth of services already lavished on the scots are already being subsidised by the english. my point was it would be EVEN MORE unfair to expect the english to subsidise more services for the scots whilst there are still anomolies south of the border.

i doubt scrapping newsnight scotland would even go any way to saving nearly enough money to put in place the infrastructure to provide opt outs.

no but we need to think of *something* to get shot of it

Was pleased to read a bit of information from this article regarding BBC Scotland's plans for covering regions:

Yes - this sounds a bit like a Scottish answer to the proposed "Where I Live" local TV pilots in England. (Effectively local TV for broadband and possibly digital satellite/cable distribution - but not a "BBC One" opt-out in its own right)

I believe the plan is for "one man band" Reporter/Camera/Editor posts (a bit like some VideoJournalists elsewhere)- though these are obviously a bit more limited in terms of what they can safely shoot - just as VJs are elsewhere.