New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

The same one who thought BBC London News was inadequate for broadcast in Scotland, after an evacuation prevented Glasgow from broadcasting local news, switching to London back up!

(I'm sure someone will link the relavant posts if more info is required!)

London News is also a poor choice, but at least using that you don't end up crashing out, back to a junction mid sentence. It's a mess.

All that's needed is what BBC 1 HD does 18:30hrs to 19:00hrs, effectively a barrage of trailers, back timed to end neatly, and with a bit of skill, a region could even jump in later on, if they missed the proper opt in point.

There was a power failure in Southampton yesterday, the Lunchtime programme only aired on the Oxford transmitter for some reason and was done under studio houselights.

Kirsty McCabe presenting weather forecasts on South Today this morning...

Amy Garcia is working at BBC South Today for six months - wonder if she'll end up presenting too?

With the hiring of Kirsty McCabe, it appears Alexis Green is now working full time as a sports reporter, probably in Jo Kent's role.

Kirsty's only there for six months though according to her website.

This week there is a new Olympic title sequence for the Torch Relay passing through the region. Also some good captions for local coverage.

Off topic, but I've just returned from seeing the torch in Basingstoke, and all I can say is that the atmosphere was incredible.

It turns up in Kent next week, I'm surprised Mr Dinenage MBE isn't a carrier.

The last two nights have shown up the total confusion with three BBC regions not understanding what exactly their patches are.

Last night BBC Points West presented the whole of their show, on site in Salisbury, a city firmly in BBC South's region. South Today just did a couple of live injects, into their studio based show. Also, it seemed to me, flicking between PW and ST that nothing, or very little was being shared between the two OBs.

Tonight, Spotlight were live on Portland for the 18:30 to 19:00hrs prog, while their 19:00hrs special was presented from Weymouth Beach. South Today were at the beach too, again seemingly 100% separate. Weymouth is predominately in Spotlight's region (on DTT, though DSAT is ST), so at least a slightly better balance of coverage than Salisbury.

South Today showed earlier footage from Lyme Regis a town firmly inside Spotlight's region, while Spotlight featured Dorchester, which is ST's patch.

Would it not have been better for Spotlight and South Today to have mounted a joint programme from Weymouth/Portland ? And I still fail to understand what PW were doing in Salisbury !

Agreed. The Olympic Torch Relay does rather seem to cause a lot of region-stretching amongst the various regional news programmes, doesn't it?!

For last night's Olympic Torch coverage, South Today once again continued its habit of treating Brighton & Hove as part of their editorial region, despite the Whitehawk Hill changes back in the spring having relegated ST reception in the area - on ANY platform - to only the minority of viewers sufficiently savvy and/or bothered to make the effort to find ways of receiving ST in preference to SET (such as going to the 900-and-something channels on Sky, etc).

I suppose it's just about understandable, as it was the natural conclusion of the Portsmouth-to-West Sussex leg of the torch journey (which ST clearly *do* have business in covering). Also, the celebration was specifically in Hove, so it was at least the "right side" (i.e. the west side) of the conurbation, for ST to just about be able to lay claim to, I suppose.

Also, in order to squeeze the lighting of the cauldron into the programme, ST overran through all the pre-One Show adverts/trailers, and crashed into the BBC One ident *just* in time for the CA starting to speak, almost clipping his first syllable.

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They said that the torch will be back in the ST region on Friday, when it's in Guildford. I've always been very unclear as to which parts of Surrey are ST, and which bits are LDN - can anyone enlighten me?

I've always been under the impression that the lion's share of the county is LDN territory, and that ST can only really claim western/SW/southern-most fringes. Can anyone put me right?

I know that SET's weather map shows Oxted, but I presume that they also have claim to only a very thin slither of Surrey?

Also, how big are any overlap zones between reception of ST/LDN (or LDN/SET), and which programme would the majority of viewers in a given Surrey town receive?

Cheers in advance, folks.