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BBC English Regions is the division of the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

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responsible for local and regional television, radio, web, and

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

services in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, the

Isle of Man ) , anthem = "O Land of Our Birth" , image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg , image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg , mapsize = , map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe , map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green) in Europe ...

, and the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

. It is one of the BBC's four "nations" – the others being

BBC Cymru Wales BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the BBC and the main public broadcaster in Wales. It is one of the four BBC national regions, alongside the BBC English Regions, BBC Northern Ireland and BBC Scotland. Established in 1964, BBC Cymru Wales is b ...

, BBC Northern Ireland, and BBC Scotland. 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 Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

transmission coverage rather than administrative boundaries. BBC English Regions has its headquarters at The Mailbox in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

(West Midlands) and additional regional television centres in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

Nottingham Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...

, Broadcasting House (London),

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

, MediaCityUK (Salford),

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

Tunbridge Wells Royal Tunbridge Wells is a town in Kent, England, southeast of central London. It lies close to the border with East Sussex on the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formation High Rocks. T ...

, Plymouth,

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

, and

Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south-ea ...

as well as local radio stations based at 43 locations across England. Overall, the division produces over 70% of the BBC's domestic television and radio output hours, for about 7% of the licence fee. Since April 2009, the English Regions division has been aligned with the

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

department to "maximise co-operation in the BBC's news operations".

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. 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 BBC North (Group) is an operational business division of the BBC. It is also a brand that has been used by the BBC to mean: *The large ''BBC North'' region, centred on Manchester, that was active from the late 1920s until 1968 and was based u ...

was based in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and covered the area from Cheshire and

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

northwards, BBC Midlands and East Anglia was based in

covering a swathe of central England from the Potteries to

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

, and BBC South and West was based in

covering the area south and west of a line from

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east ...

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 The BBC Regional Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing a number of earlier BBC local stations between 1922 and 1924 – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the Home Service, two days be ...

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: *The two major television channels

BBC1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

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 BBC Birmingham is one of the oldest regional arms of the BBC, located in Birmingham. It was the first region outside London to start broadcasting both the corporation's radio (in 1922) and television (in 1949) transmissions, the latter from th ...

and

BBC Manchester BBC Manchester (often known as BBC Salford) is the British Broadcasting Corporation regional headquarters for the North West, the largest BBC region in the UK. BBC Manchester is a department of the BBC North Group division. The BBC considers ...

– were established in the headquarters of the former regions, to produce programming for national broadcast across the entire United Kingdom. Each of the production centres also had network radio studios (

, for instance, producing ''

The Archers ''The Archers'' is a BBC radio drama on BBC Radio 4, the corporation's main spoken-word channel. Broadcast since 1951, it was famously billed as "an everyday story of country folk" and is now promoted as "a contemporary drama in a rural sett ...

'') plus a small television news studio, the latter to enable local (

opt out The term opt-out refers to several methods by which individuals can avoid receiving unsolicited product or service information. This option is usually associated with direct marketing campaigns such as e-mail marketing or direct mail. A list of thos ...

) 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. As a result of the latter, Plymouth-based BBC South West and

-based

BBC South BBC South is the BBC English Region serving Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Dorset, Berkshire and parts of Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Surrey, West Sussex and Wiltshire, with geographic coverage varying b ...

were split from

BBC West BBC West is one of BBC's English Regions serving Bristol, the majority of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire; northern and eastern Somerset and northeastern Dorset. Services Television BBC West's television service (broadcast on BBC One) consists o ...

in Bristol;

-based

BBC East BBC East is one of BBC's English Regions covering Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, northern Buckinghamshire, and the majority of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. It is headquartered in The Forum, Norwich since 2003. It wa ...

separated from BBC Midlands in Birmingham; a new smaller

BBC North West BBC North West is the BBC English Region serving Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, North Yorkshire (western Craven), West Yorkshire (western Calderdale), Derbyshire (western High Peak), Cumbria (Barrow-in-Furness ...

was created from the existing

-based region, with the old

name being taken by the newly created region based in

; and the existing

-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 BBC South East is the BBC English region serving Kent, East Sussex, most parts of West Sussex and southern parts of Surrey. The BBC region was created in September 2001 by the joining of the Heathfield transmitter (formerly part of the BBC ...

although the region was not to get a dedicated regional programme of its own until 1982 and regional news bulletins for the area did not launch until September 1985. 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. 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 Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. The practice of having a government official responsib ...

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 Ceefax (, punning on "seeing facts") was the world's first teletext information service and a forerunner to the current BBC Red Button service. Ceefax was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended, after 38 years of broadcasting, at 23:32:19 BST ( ...

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

BBC London BBC London is the BBC English Region producing local radio, television, teletext and online services in London and parts of the surrounding area. Its output includes the daily ''BBC London News'' and weekly '' Sunday Politics'' on television, ...

(separated from BBC South East) became a region in 2001 and

was split into

BBC Yorkshire BBC Yorkshire is one of the English regions of the BBC. It was formed from the division of the former BBC North region into BBC Yorkshire and BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, based in Kingston upon Hull. Serving West, North and South Yorkshire a ...

and

BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, sometimes abbreviated to BBC Yorks & Lincs, is the name for the BBC's twelfth English Region, based in Kingston upon Hull and created from the division of the former BBC North region, based in Leeds (now known a ...

in 2004 – 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 London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, the

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

South East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

, South, South West,

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

, the

and East Midlands, and the

North West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

regions of England, with the ''Look North'' branding for

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and the North East and Cumbria, with national bulletins for

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

and

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. All follow the national UK-wide

bulletins.

Programmes

Programmes made for BBC English Regions include '' Walking with...'' and ''Winter Walks'', 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, a new regional documentary strand titled ''We Are England'' was launched, as a replacement for the current affairs show '' Inside Out''. A notable change is that episodes represent large, new, combinations of English regions, based in six main bases (Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, London, Newcastle and Norwich); each week is themed around a different subtitle, with the first being ''Mental Health''. Aisling O'Connor, the head of TV Commissioning for BBC England, commissioned 120 episodes to be broadcast in 2022, with the first being shown on 26 January 2022 at 7:30pm. In-addition to being shown on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

, select episodes are also repeated on

and on

BBC Three BBC Three is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was first launched on 9 February 2003 with programmes targeting 16 to 34-year-olds, covering all genres including animation, comedy, cur ...

References

External links

* * {{BBC Television English Regions Mass media in Birmingham, West Midlands Mass media in England Organisations based in Birmingham, West Midlands

History

The four regions

''Broadcasting in the Seventies''

Current structure

Programmes

''We Are England''

See also

References

Further reading

External links