Last month I was pleased to read how much Radio Times readers value the precious bit of the BBC that I’m responsible for: our local and regional news and content in England.
It was especially powerful because around the same time I was talking with our teams about the significant financial challenges we face. BBC Local services need to save £9 million over the next two years as part of the BBC’s overall £500 million savings. It’s tough.
We’ve made difficult, well-documented choices in recent years. We reduced some off‑peak local radio programmes, creating larger shared shows at certain times of day to reinvest money into our digital offer locally. However difficult letting go is, we do need to keep transforming to stay ahead in an ever-changing world.
The way we all follow local news, our favourite sports and the stories that matter to us has changed, radically and permanently. Push alerts and podcasts? They were barely in our vocabulary ten years ago. Now many of us start and end our day with them.
I’m incredibly proud that across England we have 39 local radio stations, 13 regional TV programmes and 43 online news services to turn to. We’re there for the big moments, the breaking news, the daily companionship, the heart-wrenching or weird and wonderful stories that only make sense where you live. But exactly how we do that has and will continue to evolve.
There was a time not even ten years ago when one part of our offer was making hundreds of regional documentaries for BBC One every year. They were good programmes full of journalism, but they were aired once and for the most part, disappeared. That model worked – until it didn’t. Audiences changed the way in which they wanted to consume our content.
Today, yes, we still put out agenda-setting local investigations. You may have seen our reporting this week on nursery safeguarding on BBC One and online – award-winning journalism that holds power to account, driven by our local teams.
But those stories no longer vanish after a single broadcast. They live on iPlayer, develop in real time on our website, feature on the 6:30 news, on radio, and in podcasts. Because the reality is simple: most people aren’t sitting down at 7pm on a Monday waiting for one documentary anymore.
So, we meet Local audiences wherever they are, delivering essential news and information to help people be better informed about where they live.
Read more:
- Inside the BBC saving cuts and what it really means for UK audiences
- If we are in a crisis of news, we should look to the BBC to prioritise that fight – not make it worse
For the local elections this year, we coupled our unique local expertise with our established digital platforms and technology to make sure our audiences felt completely plugged in. We had interviews with party leaders, live debates, localised push notifications of results and BBC Local content was seen more than 50 million times on Facebook and Instagram.
We are constantly innovating; in London we now make smart, short films for YouTube about everything from transport to hidden corners of the city.
Our sports coverage has expanded from set piece moments to always‑on fandom. You can follow your club through dedicated feeds, daily audio updates on BBC Sounds, and podcasts that fans genuinely love like Leeds United’s Don’t Go to Bed Just Yet that has been streamed on platform over half a million times. That’s what modern local loyalty looks like.
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Thanks to our expert local teams across England, we still produce original, genuinely local radio every day delivered via your radio, smart speaker or BBC Sounds. It is vital we invest where audiences are growing fastest.
Our local podcasts Love Bombed, Assume Nothing, Crime Next Door and Strange But True Crime are reaching huge audiences and putting local stories on a much bigger stage.
In a world of noise, misinformation and globalised content, trusted local news matters more than ever. When everything feels overwhelming, Radio Times readers can rely upon our local content to make sense of the world right in front of us. And with feel-good local radio programmes and content like our Make A Difference show celebrating local heroes, we are reminded it can be a very good world too.
Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
