Recommendation 9

The BBC told us that the move out of London has been designed to improve its representation in and portrayal of the regions, which will have a direct impact on audiences’ appreciation scores for the BBC. We queried whether the viewing public will notice any difference from the plans to relocate productions and national news teams if they are still producing similar kinds of programming. The BBC said that it believes that this does change the very nature of the editorial shape of programmes. It gave the examples of BBC Radio 5 live and 6 Music, which it said have a different feel given that a lot of the shows on these are produced in Salford.17 We also queried how regional audiences will continue to receive the regional news coverage that they value most when the BBC plans to move from an issue-based news agenda to a “story-led” news model producing more general news for national audiences. The BBC told us that its story-led model will provide the same level of news, but more productively created. Story teams will produce more general news content while still allowing individual programmes to have their different flavours.18