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BBC English Regions

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BBC English Regions
TV transmittersTerrestrial, cable and BBC UK regional TV on satellite
Radio stationsBBC Local Radio
HeadquartersThe Mailbox, Birmingham, England
NationEngland
RegionsBBC East
BBC East Midlands
BBC London
BBC North East and Cumbria
BBC North West
BBC South
BBC South East
BBC South West
BBC West
BBC West Midlands
BBC Yorkshire
BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
Key people
Helen Thomas, Director of BBC England (2018 - date)
Official website
bbc.co.uk/england

BBC English Regions is the division of the BBC responsible for local and regional television, radio, web, and teletext services in England, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. It is one of the BBC's four "nations" – the others being BBC Cymru Wales, BBC Northern Ireland, and BBC Scotland.[1]

The division is made up of 12 regions. Many of the names of these regions are similar to those of the official government Regions of England, but the areas covered are often significantly different, being determined by terrestrial transmission coverage rather than administrative boundaries.[2]

BBC English Regions has its headquarters at The Mailbox in Birmingham (West Midlands) and additional regional television centres in Norwich, Nottingham, Television Centre (London), Newcastle, MediaCityUK (Manchester), Southampton, Tunbridge Wells, Plymouth, Bristol, Leeds, and Kingston upon Hull as well as local radio stations based at 43 locations across England.[3]

Overall, the division produces over 70% of the BBC's domestic television and radio output hours, for about 7% of the licence fee.[4]

Since April 2009, the English Regions division has been aligned with the BBC News department to "maximise co-operation in the BBC's news operations".[5]

History

The four regions

The current BBC English Regions division was the product of the controversial Broadcasting in the Seventies report – a radical review of the BBC's network radio and non-metropolitan broadcasting structure – published on 10 July 1969.[6]

Before this the structure of regional broadcasting in England had remained virtually unchanged since the late 1920s, when the establishment of four regional radio transmission stations covering England had led to a regional structure on similar lines. BBC North was based in Manchester and covered the area from Cheshire and Sheffield northwards, BBC Midlands and East Anglia was based in Birmingham covering a swathe of central England from the Potteries to Norfolk, and BBC South and West was based in Bristol covering the area south and west of a line from Gloucester to Brighton. The London area, though it had regional transmission infrastructure of its own, produced only national programming and wasn't considered to be a region as it acted as the sustaining service for the other regions.

These regions (alongside the national regions BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland that performed a similar role outside England) were well-suited to delivering the pre-war BBC Regional Programme and the post-war BBC Home Service that replaced it. By the 1960s, though, the growth of television, the birth of the more locally based ITV franchises in 1955 and the development of smaller BBC Local Radio stations (made possible by the development of FM radio) were making the structure look increasingly anachronistic.

Broadcasting in the Seventies

The effect of Broadcasting in the Seventies was to separate the two different roles of regional BBC offices into different organisations:[7][8]

  • The two major television channels BBC1 and BBC2 were to remain primarily national operations. To prevent this leading to total domination by London, three large Network Production Centres (NPC), each one having its own medium-size colour TV studio – BBC Bristol, BBC Birmingham and BBC Manchester – were established in the headquarters of the former regions, to produce programming for national broadcast across the entire United Kingdom.[9]

Each of the production centres also had network radio studios (BBC Birmingham, for instance, producing The Archers) plus a small television news studio, the latter to enable local (opt out) programming.

  • BBC English Regions was created to take on this other role of the former regions – the production of specifically local programming (mainly from small island sites) – through a new tier of eight much smaller regions described on page eight of the report as "the basic unit of English broadcasting outside London" and controlled from headquarters in the newly built Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham.[10]

As a result of the latter, Plymouth-based BBC South West and Southampton-based BBC South were split from BBC West in Bristol; Norwich-based BBC East separated from BBC Midlands in Birmingham; a new smaller BBC North West was created from the existing Manchester-based region, with the old BBC North name being taken by the newly created region based in Leeds;[11] and the existing Newcastle-based BBC North East separated from the old BBC North Region in this process.

In addition London and the surrounding area was finally recognised as a region with the creation of BBC South East although it wasn't to get a dedicated regional programme of its own until 1982.[12]

These new regions produced local news programmes and opt-outs on television, but regional radio programming on the BBC Home Service was to be replaced by BBC Local Radio.[13] The report stated that the local radio experiment, started in 1967 "has proved that there is a demand for local radio" and that the BBC should "put forward to the Postmaster General a provisional scheme for expanding our local network to about forty stations".

Current structure

This structure has largely survived since the 1970s. Local news services were developed on Ceefax from 1997 and were extended onto the web in 1999. The decreasing costs of television production and improving technology also enabled the gradual development of even smaller regions. In 1991, BBC East Midlands was finally created in Nottingham,[14] BBC London (separated from BBC South East) became a region in 2001[15] and BBC North was split into BBC Yorkshire and BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in 2004[16] – with the new millennium seeing several BBC regions moving into new premises. In the East, South and South West regions, sub-regional opt-outs during local news programmes have also been created (similar to those on ITV regional news programmes), based respectively in Cambridge, Oxford and Jersey. In total, the BBC has produced the regional news bulletins for London, the East, South East, South, South West, West, the West and East Midlands, and the North West regions of England, with the Look North branding for Yorkshire, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and the North East and Cumbria, with national bulletins for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. All follow the national UK-wide BBC News bulletins.

Programmes

Programmes made for BBC English Regions include Walking with... and Winter Walks,[17] two series produced by Cy Chadwick, where presenters take solitary walks along scenic paths, filming themselves and their surroundings with a 360-degree camera on a selfie stick. All the episodes from a series get a regional slot on BBC One where they are broadcast at all the same time, before the whole series gets a national repeat on either BBC Two or BBC Four.

We Are England

In 2022, the regions started to broadcast a new documentary strand called We Are England,[18][19] as a replacement for the current affairs show Inside Out. Whereas Inside Out was a topical show with an episode made for each English region, We Are England is made for six areas (with production bases being located in the six areas' main centres of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, London, Newcastle and Norwich) and themed each week around a subtitle, with the first week's six episodes being subtitled Mental Health,[20][21] the second week's six, The Night Shift[22][23] and the third, Bossing It.[24][25] Aisling O’Connor, the Head of TV Commissioning for BBC England, has commissioned 120 episodes for 2022, with the first group of six being broadcast at the same time in the six areas (equating to thirteen BBC One regions) on 26 January 2022 at 7.30pm.[26][27][28][29][30] In addition to its weekly BBC One slot, selected episodes from We Are England are getting a repeat on the BBC News channel with the Cold Swim: Tynemouth episode being the first documentary seen on the channel,[31] and Night Nurses: Birmingham being selected the week after from the six The Night Shift programmes.[32]


In 2022, two ′′We are England programmes were pulled at late notice on editorial concerns: one on cryptocurrency and the other on a performing arts school.[33][34]

See also

References

  1. ^ "BBC Nations & Regions". BBC Press Office. August 2004. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  2. ^ "BBC English Regions". BBC Commissioning. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  3. ^ "English Regions". BBC Press Office. Archived from the original on 29 March 2007. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  4. ^ "Information About BBC English Regions". BBC English Regions. Archived from the original on 20 March 2007. Retrieved 13 April 2007.
  5. ^ "BBC promotes role of national and regional broadcasting in leadership restructuring". BBC Press Office. 7 October 2008. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
  6. ^ The BBC Story – 1960s (page 6) BBC
  7. ^ Broadcasting in the Seventies. British Broadcasting Corporation. 1969. ISBN 0-563-08562-2.
  8. ^ "Broadcasting in the Seventies". Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  9. ^ "House of Lords – BBC Charter Review – Minutes of Evidence". UK Parliament. 22 November 2005. Retrieved 13 April 2007.
  10. ^ "The future of Pebble Mill". BECTU. 7 May 1999. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  11. ^ "Look North is 35!". BBC Bradford and West Yorkshire. 25 March 2003.
  12. ^ "BBC South East News". The TV Room +. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2009.
  13. ^ "Frequency Finder UK – History of radio transmission". Archived from the original on 30 April 2007. Retrieved 13 April 2007.
  14. ^ Broadcasting in the Seventies was a document concerned mainly with radio reorganisation and funding – having only one and one half pages devoted to television and the regions (on pages 7 and 8) – where it had stated, back in 1969, that "in the longer term, as money permits, we would hope to set up further centres, with the one in the East Midlands as a first priority".
  15. ^ "BBC South East – News". TV Ark. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2009.
  16. ^ "BBC – BBC buildings". Archived from the original on 22 March 2007. Retrieved 20 April 2007.
  17. ^ "BBC Four - Winter Walks, Series 1, Simon Armitage". BBC.
  18. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wc9/episodes/player
  19. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wc9
  20. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013x88
  21. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wyr
  22. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00144b3
  23. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014450
  24. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014b0g
  25. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014b7f
  26. ^ https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/broadcasting-news/2022/01/bbc-commissions-120-we-are-england-documentaries
  27. ^ https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/192282-bbc/
  28. ^ https://rts.org.uk/article/bbc-england-launches-new-current-affairs-programme-platform-underserved-audiences
  29. ^ https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/we-are-england-to-redraw-bbc-tv-regions
  30. ^ https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/bbc-announces-new-regional-current-affairs-strand-for-england
  31. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013wq5
  32. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001449m
  33. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/14/bbc-pulls-another-episode-of-we-are-england-current-affairs-show. BBC pulls another episode of We Are England current affairs show
  34. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/10/bbc-cryptocurrency-documentary-pulled-from-air-at-last-minute

Further reading

  • Briggs, Asa (1961–1995). The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (Volumes I-V). Oxford University Press.
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