Set them free

 A fair number of presenters and their listeners are asking when will lockdown end on BBC Local Radio. 

The BBC response to the pandemic at local radio level has seen a measure of central command and control not experienced since Mark Byford was Director of Regional Broadcasting in the 90s, determining the number and titles of correspondents for each station. 

Weekdays on every station are broken down into four hour chunks - 6-10, 10-2 and 2-6 - with a single presenter trying to maintain the will to live for each session, five days a week. Knackering for the host and their audience. This plan is so good it's been rolled out to Bradford, Wolverhampton and Sunderland, with stations previously thought to be on their knees supplying staff to run these 'temporary' operations from 6am to 2pm. 

BBC strategists, responding to the rallying cries of Tim Davie, are highly likely to propose that this is the future, before fully understanding whether or not it's working. Certainly it would be a point of difference with local commercial radio, impoverished now as Ofcom and the major commercial groups skip hand in hand over pages and pages of dropped commitments to local news.  We haven't had audience figures since Q1 2020.  Then, BBC local radio reached 7.8m people each week. That's down from 8.8m five years ago, and 9.5m ten years ago.