New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Some images worked within the master edit lambie Nairn provided, some didn't. I seem to remember we did try to include the windmill at Brill and the Brunel shopping centre in Swindon but they didn't work as well as the shots we ended up using. Silverstone is in fact in Northamptonshire, so it's not quite all Oxfordshire.

Ah yes, Henley-on-Thames, a town served by a transmitter that's part of the London region, so most of the punters there have never seen the Southampton, or Oxford versions of South Today.

Henley is one of those awkward places that don't fit into BBC Regions! The town's in Oxfordshire but as you say the majority received BBC London (who almost never cover anything from there). BBC Oxford feels duty-bound to cover news in the town mainly because of the fact it's in the county, despite the fact hardly anyone there can receive a terrestrial signal (how many people chose to view BBC Oxford if they have satellite is harder to quantify).

There are similar issues with High Wycombe and Wycombe - again somewhere BBC Oxford regularly cover (though less often than Henley) and Wycombe Wanderers and London Wasps (who play at Adams Park) always feature in Oxford's Sport round ups.

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of towns around the country where the 'wrong' region usually ends up covering the news from that area!

Quite so !!

The HoT transmitter also carries BBC Radio Berkshire (rather than Oxford), although that's also to serve the A4 corridor between Reading and Maidenhead (firmly in Berks) but also Marlow that's in Bucks. Doh !

Oh yeah, of course it is! Doh! (I've always known where Silverstone is, it just slipped my mind that it's in the Oxford News titles).

There seems to kind-of be two different definitions of the Oxford News editorial area

Pan-regional ST seems to stick to what I call the "Strict" definition of the sub-region (i.e. literally just Oxfordshire, the Swindon district of Wilts, and the Aylesbury Vale and Wycombe districts (and possibly also some/all of the Chiltern district?) of Bucks, and not a millimeter beyond. (Although, for the occasional "big thing" such as Digital Switchover subject matter, they have been known to stretch to acknowledging the Milton Keynes area).

Conversely, BBC Oxford News is a lot more liberal on a regular basis. They frequently throw in the odd news story stretching towards the likes of Cirencester (Gloucs), Silverstone/Brackley/Towcester (Northants), and Tring (Herts), amongst others. Some such place names even appear in the title sequence!

It seems odd to me that somewhere which outside of the "Strict" region - as Silverstone indeed is - should be featured in the titles, whilst no images from Bucks itself are included. On the other had, you could say that the inclusion of Silverstone surely implies that anything in-between Oxon and Northants (i.e. Bucks) must logically be a part of the region. So, in a slightly backhanded way, the Silverstone image effectively serves to "include Bucks" in the titles, I suppose.

BBC Oxford News has only been referred to on-screen since the rebrand in 2008, before that it was South Today Oxford (although even the word Oxford didn't appear on the branding until 2005).

I agree that sub-opts are often wider (patch wise) than the area Southampton might consider, but that's the point - that the sub-region can find time to include reports from parts of the patch that a pan-regional wouldn't bother with. Lots of the North Cotswolds get Oxford terestrially, but a fair bit gets Midlands Today, which hardly ever cover anything from there. Cirencester is predominantly Points West territory, but there are pockets of Oxford viewers too.

Part of the brief for the titles was 'striking images'. Some shots worked better than others as I've said, unfortunately nothing from Bucks ended up in the final cut. If we were doing them again now, I reckon something new like the Waterside Theatre in Aylesbury may well work very nicely.

Milton Keynes itself is a bit of a weird one, I gather a lot of the town (is it a city?) gets cable and the options are London or Cambridge. Yet terrestrially speaking, the signal is receivable in Bletchley and the Western side of MK so big stories from MK often make it into BBC Oxford News.

Maybe it's time for a new set of titles...

BBC South is just one of those regions that has overlap with other regions and so covers stories from those regions for those in the overlap or for those who have business just over the TV Border so as to speak. It adds variety and I personally believe makes it better.

The disadvantage to this is that some programme seem to miss BBC South out - Crimewatch Roadshow comes to mind. As the programme tours the country, overlapping areas covered by the region are counted as other regions, resulting in the touring programme visiting South East and West, representing sections of the regions with local reporters from Bristol and Tunbridge Wells.

I've never fully understood why the region is not divided more equally in half. An Oxford/Hannington sub-region with a Rowridge/Midhurst remnant would seem more equitable and provide both parts of the region with a more local service. I realise there are overlap issues, particularly with Hannington, but with editorial cunning the stories from the overlapping areas could be covered in the pan-regional part of the programme.

Yes, I agree, and it was that particular split that ITV used for a while, when the Oxford half of Central South was merged with Meridian North (aka Hannington).

Are they the same Silverstone images used by Look East (West)?

Yup!

The exact same shot is image #3 on Look East, and image #2 on Oxford News.

By the way, it seems the Lunchtime Edition of South Today either failed to opt, or crashed back early to the BBC News Channel sustaining feed.

It confused Mrs MarkyMark, she switched on at 13:40, and imagined she was watching the News Channel, then mid interview it just crashed into a BBC 1 junction, and Wimbledon started up, she then checked ( pressing the remote's 'i' button, see, no need for DOGs ) and realised she was indeed watching BBC 1.

Whose hair-brained idea was it to make 'News 24' the network sustaining feed during opts ?