Launch BBC One North

[Roger Darthwell]

If they’re not going to add a ‘North’ identifier to the ident, or even acknowledge ‘BBC One North’ in the announcement, why bother? Or is ‘Eh up’ at the start of the announcement what we’re to expect?

Is this an exercise purely about giving the north announcers with regional accents, or just ensuring that viewers in the south don’t have to put up with them?

I’m quick to defend the BBC, but this seems totally unnecessary in an era when the corporation is cutting back so much.

Exactly, even when the BBC is closing regional news in parts of England

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The thing is, it’s not just about how northern they can make it sound, it’s also about how un-southern too. Part of my issue I’ve long had with the BBC is how southern it feels, and that’s not just about accents. They’ve done some good things to move production out of London in many instances but I still don’t think that comes through on screen. I’m not saying southern = bad by the way but more that it is assumed south = everywhere.

I think this is a brilliant move. If I was to take it one step further, I’d do a northern One Show too, a show that for me sums up everything I’ve said above.

I think this is a horrific move, to me it feels like northern announcers are being ghettoized by the BBC, instead of having their talents showcased in the wider network. Heck, I have absolutely no issues whatsoever in hearing annoucers in Northern (or any different) accents on BBC One!

[RDJ]

It all seems a bit of a muchness. If the BBC wanted to feel more inclusive and local with its regional identity in England, you’d think they’d do better than just split England into North and South. Everyone knows how multifaceted “the North” and “the South” in their own rights are, and if you’re hearing (for arguments sake) West Country voices in the likes of Birmingham or Scouse voices in Newcastle then it kind of defeats the whole assumed objective.

It either really needs to be completely regional, hearing the relevant voices in the relevant regions - or we might as well hear the full mix of voices country-wide. Surely the latter would promote how diverse we are as a country.

[Critique]

For anyone that's interested, a quick look on iPlayer at the 9pm and 10pm junctions revealed the following:

9pm

BBC One North: ECP for Top Gear and Cricket highlights, long trail for 'The Control Room' and then ident into Panorama
BBC One South (?!): ECP for Top Gear and verbal mention of Panorama, short trail for a Joe Wicks podcast, short trail for coverage of Wireless festival, short trail for 'The Control Room' and then ident into Panorama

10pm

BBC One North: ECP for Whistleblowers documentary, trail for World athletics Championships, BBC iPlayer boxsets trail, then ident (regional as usual) into the News at Then
BBC One South: ECP for Whistleblowers documentary, trail for World Athletics Championships, short version of the 'This is our BBC' trail, then ident (regional as usual except for London) into the News at Ten

It does seem like a bit of an indulgence so far, unless they're planning on doing any opt-outs for BBC One North?

[all new Phil]

I think this is a horrific move, to me it feels like northern announcers are being ghettoized by the BBC, 

Don’t be silly.

[Steve in Pudsey]

The latter although I imagine it'll be used strategically too. The media planners will have all sorts of data as to what appeals to who and who watches what and where they are. The ability to promote different things to different parts of the country is very useful. 

Its not something ITV do, but of course they did once. The audience of Tyne Tees wouldn't have have been getting the same mix of promos for networked shows than those watching Thames would have

Do they need a complete separate playout and continuity setup outside London to be able do this? Surely it’s just a case of scheduling the promos on a computer which could be done from anywhere in the world.

When we’re at the point when BBC local radio programmes and regional news programmes aren’t allowed to have more than one presenter, it does seem rather a luxury to have five different people around the UK all telling us that it’s time for The One Show.

Most of the cost is probably already accounted for in the DR arrangements.

The RedBee shenanigans demonstrated the value of having a hot spare facility, and putting it on air regularly means there won't be any surprises (like C4's access services surprise) when something hits the fan.

There could be some hidden wins in this scenario - if the Salford based staff were just there on standby* there's probably not a lot of job satisfaction there, so the cost of employing an announcer and going on air every day might be offset by reducing staff turnover and the cost of recruting and training. That's obviously speculation, of course.

* At the old DR facility at a location in the South East, staff were rotad to work at both sites on different days, typically doing prep activities from the DR site but being available to take over if W12 had a catastrophe.

[Andrew]

So the take away from the above is that they must have knowledge that us up north can’t be doing with Joe Wicks!

[Spencer]

Is there a reason why the existing continuity centres in Cardiff, Belfast or Glasgow can’t provide DR for London?

[Steve in Pudsey]

I'm not sure that the Nations staff would have the capacity to do it. They're a very lean operation as it is, with facilities built for one person operation. If they're suddenly ingesting all of the network content, dealing with OBs etc might not be feasible.

[denton]

The irony of Duncan being the announcer for the south tonight isn't lost.

I'll be interested to see what exactly constitutes alternative trails - simply banishing 'southern' voices or plugging shows they think will more appeal to northerners?

I guess not having a 'North' identifier does mask that this is only a primetime split but I just can't see the benefit of separating the continuity. Just now Anthony plugged the Lionesses on Friday while Duncan went with tonight's  Panorama story. What are we supposed to take from that?

It would be interesting to know how this works in practice too, whether it's run as a separate channel like the nations, or slaved to the southern one.

Hope both aren't banished to one place either, they're excellent announcers.

There will of course be an element of favouring north of England accents for the northern version of BBC One England. However, a lot of it is also about having a separate announcer, who can do longer / shorter idents as required... the trails in the junctions aren't always going to add up to the same duration, therefore you need the idents / announcers to act like an elastic band. The same happens in the Nations.

BBC One North works in a similar way to the Nations, in that it will leave and join programmes on the clean feed, and listen out to the network director in London for the off air and on air times of the network programmes. 

The difference is that BBC One North has a playout director and announcer, while in each Nation the Announcer/Director is a one person operation.

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Is there a reason why the existing continuity centres in Cardiff, Belfast or Glasgow can’t provide DR for London?

Well... on a full time DR basis the reason is that the contract sits with Red Bee. 

However, who is to say that a Nation hasn't (for a short period of time, in the recent past) been the standby in case of a complete network playout failure?

As for the ingest of programmes... with majority of programmes being delivered to the BBC (not Red Bee) as files, it's very easy for any of the playout centres to access the majority of programmes. It's a mostly automated process, in that any programmes scheduled for transmission that day will dub across to where they are needed by the time they are needed. You can also manually start a dub across if required at shortish notice.

The lines records of late arriving programmes from edit suites or OBs is where the tricky bit is, but some days there will be a few, and others none at all... and the recordings can be scheduled, it's only really the marking up of in and out points that is the faffy bit.

Line up and routing of live OBs is no great difficulty, the Nations have been doing that themselves for decades.

[technologist]

The fact that Red Bee plays Out from both/either Broadcast Centre Or Salford at any time 
is why it was trivially impacted by the blowing up of the disk drives….
So for BBC resilience both  areas are staffed ….
So it’s a little replumbing  to get Salford to feed the north outputs.

[Richard]

Since the BBC logo changed and the regional identifiers disappeared from idents in England I thought it was because they would be having “BBC ONE North” branded idents and that it would be odd for viewers in, say, Newcastle to have have some idents saying “NE & C”, others saying “North” and others nothing at all.

But as things stand it seems pointless. Most people won’t notice.

[Markymark]

Is the BBC 1 North version also on BBC 1 HD on Freeview? Reason I ask is that a PSB 3 macro region for the north of England already exists by virtue of the ITV Granada version, so only some SDI level routing would be required to provide BBC 1 North on there?

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Since the BBC logo changed and the regional identifiers disappeared from idents in England I thought it was because they would be having “BBC ONE North” branded idents and that it would be odd for viewers in, say, Newcastle to have have some idents saying “NE & C”, others saying “North” and others nothing at all.

But as things stand it seems pointless. Most people won’t notice.

Well, it's not really meant to be consciously noticable by the viewers. It's akin to national advertising brands running different ads in different ITV regions and regionally printed national newspapers, as marketing tests

[Inspector Sands]

The fact that Red Bee plays Out from both/either Broadcast Centre Or Salford at any time 
is why it was trivially impacted by the blowing up of the disk drives….
So for BBC resilience both  areas are staffed ….
So it’s a little replumbing  to get Salford to feed the north outputs.

Yes, it's not a 'hot spare' nor is it a DR site. It just happens in two places for resilience*

So getting one of those two to do a different playlist is pretty simple to do, and of course if there's another director and announcer working on the channel in the evenings,that increases resilience


 *a lot of the BBCs core technical infrastructure is in dual sites now, a big difference to the days of the TVC power cut. ITV have a similar setup

[Humphrey Hacker]

The fact that Red Bee plays Out from both/either Broadcast Centre Or Salford at any time 
is why it was trivially impacted by the blowing up of the disk drives….
So for BBC resilience both  areas are staffed ….
So it’s a little replumbing  to get Salford to feed the north outputs.

Yes, it's not a 'hot spare' nor is it a DR site. It just happens in two places for resilience*

So getting one of those two to do a different playlist is pretty simple to do, and of course if there's another director and announcer working on the channel in the evenings,that increases resilience


 *a lot of the BBCs core technical infrastructure is in dual sites now, a big difference to the days of the TVC power cut. ITV have a similar setup

Are ITV’s backups based at Leeds or Salford?

[Inspector Sands]

Are ITV’s backups based at Leeds or Salford?

Their playout is based in Chiswick and Leeds*. Neither is a backup, both are live 24/7.

Their connectivity (done by BT) is based in a couple of locations as I understand it. Helpfully they put the names of the locations on the slate that appears when the routes are parked... and they have appeared on air on several occasions!