Everything about Bbc London totally explained
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 the weekly
Politics Show on television, the
BBC London 94.9 radio station and local coverage of the London area on
bbc.co.uk and
Ceefax. BBC London News can be viewed throughout the UK during
BBC Breakfast and on the
BBC News Channel at 6:28, 6:58, 7:28 and 7:58.
The region's headquarters are situated on
Marylebone High Street in Central London although it'll move to the new Egton Wing complex of
Broadcasting House in early 2009.
History
BBC London launched on
1 October 2001 following changes to the coverage areas of BBC transmitters allowing for the establishment of new editorial areas to be possible. The main result was a reorganisation of the BBC's
South East region; the London area was to break away entirely while a new programme,
South East Today was to be created for the new South East region. BBC London as it came to be called replaced the longrunning
Newsroom South East.
Greater London and its environs has had a regional BBC television news service for many decades, but the boundaries of the region have always been somewhat nebulous due to the coverage areas of the transmitters used, as television signals don't tend to stick neatly to administrative or historic boundaries. Therefore, while the main focus of "regional" news coverage for this area has always been on the capital itself, it has for much of the BBC's life had to offer coverage of other parts of the "
Home Counties" as well.
There were many incarnations of regional news programmes in this area before the current programme was introduced in
2001. These included the
London segment of the
Nationwide from
Lime Grove Studios; in this case, the regional presenters for
London were also usually the main presenters of the national sequence of the programme which followed. Other identities for the
London area coverage were "London Plus", and finally "Newsroom South East".
Originally, the
BBC London and the
South East region took in the whole of
Greater London, together with parts of
Essex,
Hertfordshire,
Kent,
Surrey,
Hampshire,
Buckinghamshire,
Berkshire,
Sussex,
Bedfordshire, and
Oxfordshire. This meant that sizeable communities which probably deserved dedicated programming of their own — such as
Oxford,
Luton,
Crawley and the
Medway towns — were often ill-served by a
London-biased programme which was variously based in
Shepherds Bush,
W12 and
Elstree in
Hertfordshire before the move to the present studios in
Marylebone High Street, also home to the
BBC's Governance Unit.
The area created for the
BBC London programme to broadcast to now covers a much more tightly-defined area, chiefly
Greater London but still including parts of
Bedfordshire,
Essex, and
Hertfordshire in the
East of England region and parts of
Berkshire,
Buckinghamshire,
Kent,
Surrey and
Sussex in the
South East England region. There is also some overlap with the editorial areas of other BBC regions in this part of England. Somewhat bizarrely, parts of
Oxfordshire,
Buckinghamshire,
Wiltshire,
Northamptonshire,
Berkshire and
Gloucestershire now take an opt-out of
South Today — rather than the
Midlands region it might be expected to identify more with — while most of Kent and
East Sussex is now covered by the new BBC South East region based in
Tunbridge Wells, which produces
South East Today.
The television news programme launched as
BBC LDN onscreen, an abbreviation of 'London' though it was never referred to as such by presenters.
Television
BBC London News
The
BBC London News programme broadcasts daily on
BBC One, appearing with short bulletins during
BBC Breakfast, after the
BBC News at One and after the
BBC News at Ten. The flagship programme is broadcast between 18:30 and 18:55 each weekday evening, following the end of the
BBC News at Six and is presented by
Riz Lateef.
Lateef superseded
Emily Maitlis who had been the main presenter of the flagship programme from launch until March 2006 when she left to join
BBC News and
BBC Two's
Newsnight.
The programme has had several brand refreshes, the most recent having been on 12 December 2005, with a new title sequence designed by
Red Bee Media and theme music composed by
David Lowe. The titles now involve a series of videos showing different parts of London life, separated by a white translucent band which crosses the screen until the BBC London logo appears. The title shots change every single night to reflect landmarks and activities that symbolise home for a potential audience of more than 11 million people - bigger than
Scotland,
Wales and
Northern Ireland combined.
Comparisons are inevitably made to the commercial TV regional competition, in this case
ITV1's
London Tonight, which is produced for
ITV by
ITN.
The programme can be viewed in any part of the UK (and Europe) on
digital satellite channel 974 on the
BBC UK regional TV on satellite service.
Radio
BBC London Radio combines speech and music based programmes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(External Link
) The station has a diverse range of presenters that host varied shows from sometimes controversial phone-ins -
Vanessa Feltz to
Norman Jay's Giant 45 show including old and new
soul funk and
house music, although Jay is known for not conforming to one particular style of black music.
Travel bulletins
A dedicated travel news service is operated by BBC London on all three mediums using information supplied by
Transport for London,
National Rail and the
Highways Agency. Updates within the
Breakfast programme on BBC One are shown at 06:28, 06:58, 07:28, 07:58, 08:28 and 08:58, Mondays to Fridays.
The travel news on radio is updated at 31 and 59 minutes past each hour during off peak times, and every 15 minutes, (starting at the top of the hour), during evening and morning peaks. BBC London 94.9 is one of the few radio stations to have access to TfL cameras.
The travel news online is updated from an independent travel information supplier. This data is fed from their main system onto BBC London's website, via the BBC Travel News portal. The online section also has features on various aspects of travel in London.
The current regular BBC London travel presenters are Jules Lang, Steve Phillips,
Billy Reeves and Kate Allen.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Bbc London'.
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