Talk:BBC South Today

South Today in Oxfordshire
The article would be improved if it mentioned the unpopularity of this regional news bulletin in Oxfordshire and the surrounding area. I don't know how to do this without doing original research or seeming POV, but the issue is as follows.

The reorganisation of the BBC standard regions in and around London in 2000 left the Oxford transmitter with nowhere to go, so it was lumped in with BBC South for administrative and technical convenience. Historically the BBC South region in Southampton served the coastal strip from Dorset to East Sussex and people north of the M4 motorway feel no sense of community with it at all. Even today people still grumble about 'South Coast Today', as they call South Today. Oxford is over 60 miles from Southampton and Banbury is nearly 90 miles away, well into the English Midlands and about as far from the sea as you can get.

The BBC is obviously aware of this and has always provided a short Oxfordshire opt-out, but initially this was a complete joke. The bulletin didn't report the 2001 Thames floods which paralysed Oxford until 3 days had passed. Things have gradually improved but Geraldine Peers and a camcorder at BBC Radio Oxford don't make a local news bulletin. The opt-out often only takes up 10 minutes of a 30 minute bulletin, leaving 20 minutes of stuff about yachting regattas and Portsmouth FC.

Can anyone suggest a way of incorporating this info in the article in an appropriately encyclopaedic way? --Ef80 (talk) 19:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)