Local til 2pm

Rhodri Talfan Davies, BBC Director of Everything Outside London, has a Kwartengian approach to budgets - "The BBC aims to maintain its overall investment in local services", he says, cutting 139 posts working in BBC Local Radio. Spookily, that's exactly the same number that were culled in 2020, when Rhodri enforced a lockdown weekday schedule of 3 x 4 hour shows, an exhausting challenge for any speech presenter. That now moves to 2 x 4 hours, from 6am to 2pm. 

It's the formal end, also, of hyper-local breakfast and mid-morning radio shows in Bradford, Sunderland and Wolverhampton; they get the compensation of 'new, dedicated online services'.  And we are also promised a BBC Sounds producer 'at all local bases'. 

Rhodri's also having another go at investigative journalism around England. Having eased out experienced teams making Inside Out, and messing up  with We Are England, he starts again with 71 new jobs forming 11 investigative teams; spookily the same number of teams that made Inside Out. No apology.

With a content budget of £117m last year, BBC local radio in England produced figures of 5p per listener hour. Radio Scotland cost 8p per listener hour; Radio Wales 9p, and Radio Cymru 12p.  BBC Radio nan Gàidheal was up to 23p. 

No Rishi-like mention of hard or difficult choices from Rhodri. He talks of "a better balance between our broadcast and online services" and the need "to keep pace with changing audience expectations". These cuts are management choices, as Tim Davie continues to swing money into "Across The UK"; and I'm sure Rhodri can produce sheafs of emails demanding more news of Peterborough Council's activities on TikTok....