What is in store for the next round of BBC regional TV cuts?
Here is the cuts graph again, for the period ending 2016/17
I have looked at this topic before in the Why the BBC should abandon 700+m "regional news" to fund local radio, BBC three… article.
BBC Regional News in England is very expensive - perhaps half of the BBC One budget, if 25% cuts are to be made then the regional news seems an option.
There are basically two options here: reduce the output, or reduce the regions.
Option 1: Reduce the regions
There are 14 regions in England (on top of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). One option would be to reduce that down to 8, each with 12.5% of the homes in. Here is a how that might work out:
This would mean "joining" some regions ("Leeds" and "East Midlands"), keeping some the same ("North West", "London") and splitting some ("West Midlands"). The above scheme notes that London+Heartland+SouthCoast is 3 eighths in total.
Such a scheme would be more equitable in terms of budget breakdown, but someone, somewhere is going to feel "distant" from their news centre.
These changes would make sense from a money-saving perspective. Larger regions would mean fewer studios and savings on broadcast costs, especially satellite where each BBC One region is broadcast separately.
Here's how the figures work out
Option 2: Reduce the output
Another option would be to keep all the 14 England regions, but reduce the number of broadcast minutes a year.
Currently the regions insert their own content for a few minutes per hour during Breakfast weekdays, for a quarter hour at 13:30, half an hour at 18:30, an update at 19:57, seven minutes at 22:25. At the weekend there is segments of Sunday Politics and news updates, with regional documentaries Inside Out.
To save 25% of the budget, the weekday evening programmes could be taken back to 22.5 minute, with shorter late updates and less minutes during Breakfast. The Inside Out programme could be broadcast for only 75% of the current hours.
Compared to Option 1, this option will not reduce the number of BBC studios or satellite broadcasts, but may be more acceptable to the viewer. Extending the national news by four minutes and starting the One Show three minutes sooner could cover the loss somewhat.
Over to you
Would you accept shorter programmes and bigger regions, or the same programmes covering larger regions?
10:08 PM
Graham F Lewendon: I find the national far more useful than the local. Our 'local' news really isn't local at all - its an entirely different region. If I want to find out what my weather might be, the best I can do is look in the bottom right hand corner of the screen when the weather map is up, and guess.
And since we need both national and local weather forcasting, I'm not sure it saves much money.
As for the idea that there should be some sort of gentlemans agreement over news coverage, that seems unlikely to work. Although broadcasters have organised 'pooling' in the past for certain events, I cant imagine any media organisation not covering any event simply because someone else was doing it, and I'm not sure I'd want just one organisation's coverage anyway.
As for wall to wall coverage - if you've got 24 hour a day news channels, you've got to fill them with something! Even if its speculation about speculation. If you want a different news agenda, try the World Service or BBC World News - its often refeshingly different.
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11:45 AM
If there are less Regions it should be by Government Region
(though ITV would have to build a East Midlands Studio again).
The better option is shorter Regional News bulletins on both the BBC/ITV...
Maybe drop the Breakfast and Lunchtime bulletins, just concentrate on the Evening
programmes (20 minutes at Evening, 10 minutes at Night). Leave the rest to BBC/Commercial
Stations and Local Newspapers/Websites.
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7:32 PM
I think one way of saving money is to reduce the number of 6.30 regional news presenters from two to one. If one presenter presents the main news programmes why have two for a regional thirty minute slot.
Two presenters sitting side by side at 6.30pm when money needs saving is quite ridiculous, highly inefficient and very costly.
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10:21 PM
David Newman:
The BBC could save money on it's News budget by not sending news crews out to do a report at a location where no-one featured in the report is present or going to come out of a building to give a statement. Eg. when there's a reporting about something to do with Defence, being outside MoD main buildings when there's no-one there!!
They can do that from a studio, with a picture of the relevant location electronically inserted in the background - that's one reporter in a studio, not a reporter at a location & a camera-man and no doubt a sound-man as well as an engineer with a vehicle to transmit the report back to the studio!
One person instead of four.
We'll keep our local teams in the studio, thanks!
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