BBC London (PatrZDZ's vision)

**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 bulletin and weekly First Sight and Metropol on television, the GLR radio station and local coverage of the London area on BBC Online and BBC Red Button. The region's headquarters are situated in the new eastern extension of the BBC's Broadcasting House.

## Services

### Television

The staple of the local television service is BBC London bulletin which broadcasts daily on BBC One, appearing with short bulletins during BBC Breakfast, after the BBC News at One, the BBC News at Ten and BBC Weekend News. 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. Comparisons are inevitably made to the commercial TV regional competition, in this case London Tonight, which is produced for Carlton and LWT by the London News Network. BBC London can be viewed in any part of the UK (and Europe) on digital satellite channel 954 on the BBC UK regional TV on satellite service.

BBC London also co-produces a weekly current affairs programme First Sight with BBC London, and produces a Sunday regional political programme Metropol, both broadcast on BBC Two.

### Radio

BBC GLR (Greater London Radio) combines speech and music based programmes aimed at 25 to 45-year-olds. Broadcasting across London on 94.9 FM, DAB, Telewest, NTL, BSB, Sky (in London area only), Freeview and also online. The station was previously known as BBC Radio London.

The current Breakfast show presenters are Salma El-Wardany and Tim Arthur and the mid morning phone-in show is presented by Robert Elms. The Breakfast and Drivetime shows, as well as the lunchtime London Live programme feature a wealth of local London news and comment with roving reporters out and about.

News bulletins on GLR at the top of the hour are traditionally longer than other BBC radio services at 5 minutes to fit in international, national and local stories with local sport and weather. GLR operates a dedicated travel news service using information supplied by Transport for London, National Rail and National Highways. The travel news is updated every hour during off peak times, and every 20 minutes, starting at the top of the hour, during evening and morning peaks. It is one of the few radio stations to have access to TfL traffic cameras.

Sport is a major part of the radio schedule, with regular updates in the news bulletins and four-hour sport specials on Saturdays.

## History

The bulletin launched on 1 October 2001 following changes to the coverage areas of BBC transmitters allowing for the establishment of new editorial areas. 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 long-running Newsroom South East.

Greater London and its environs have 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 do not tend to stick neatly to administrative or historical 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 Medway – were often ill-served by a London-biased programme.

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, Hampshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, 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.

Oxfordshire (excluding Henley-on-Thames), most of Buckinghamshire, north Berkshire, north east Wiltshire, south east Gloucestershire and south west Northamptonshire, now take an opt-out of South Today while most of Kent and East Sussex is now covered by the BBC South East region based in Tunbridge Wells, which produces South East Today.

## Studios

The previous news services for the area, in the old BBC South East region, were variously based in Shepherd's Bush, White City and Elstree in Hertfordshire. Following the launch of BBC London, the region moved into facilities in Marylebone High Street, where the news service was based alongside BBC London News and the BBC's Governance Unit.

The arrangement was only a temporary one, as at the time the BBC was trying to consolidate its London portfolio into a few properties. This included, most notably, the planned closure of BBC Television Centre and the extension and renovation of Broadcasting House, stage one of which would construct a huge wing, mirroring Broadcasting House in shape, size and structure named Egton Wing. The wing has recently been renamed the Peel Wing after John Peel and is the home of a number of BBC services including BBC London, who moved there in 2009 following the structure's completion and fitting.