Launch BBC One North

[Inspector Sands]

BBC2 used to be regional. But they used to share playout with BBC1.

It's nothing to do with sharing playout. BBC1 and BBC2 have come from adjacent rooms using the same infrastructure forever.

The difference is with TX chains. In the days of analogue the distribution of the two channels went via the regional centres to the transmitters and there were seperate transmitters and chains for BBC1 and 2.

Digital is different, BBC1 and 2 along with the other BBC services are multiplexed into a single data stream and transmitted together. This is done with statistical multiplexing  - whereby the services in that multiplex share and adjust theit bitrate according to demand.

In the early days of DTT the issue was that like in the analogue days they sent the multiplex to each region and then it went out of to the transmitters from there. To opt into BBC1 the region had to remove BBC1 from the multiplex and replace it with the local one. That - at the time - was difficult and expensive to do if it was a variable bit rate, so BBC1 had a fixed bitrate which was inefficient in terms of how much could fit on the Mux. Doing that with both BBC1 and 2 even more so

So the decision was taken to remove all English regional programmes off BBC2 and not replicate the regionality in the digital world. It also - later down he line - saved the cost of having another set of regions in satellite with all the costs that entails

That bitrate problem has gone away now as all the regions are sent back to a central place for encoding and multiplexing so it's more feasible, but 20 years on there's no desite to have regional BBC2 again