BBC Local Radio

But unlike with the overnight newsroom move to Sydney, the BBC doesn't appear to have shared its cost savings for closing BBC Radio 4 Extra publicly.

Is this, I wonder, because there aren't actually any savings at all? Now, I suggested last week that the BBC was going to shunt the Daily Service to 5.45 or something in the morning on BBC Local Radio, and that turns out to be the truth.

Who'd have thought it? Meanwhile, the BBC is to remove more local programming from BBC Local Radio, suggests David Lloyd, who highlights more failures with BBC Local Radio and of Ofcom in regulating it.

The UK's radio figures are out.

Matt Deegan has taken an interesting look at the figures.

Some programmes, they say, will be available on BBC Sounds.

But one eye-catching change is that the daily service will be on BBC Sounds and BBC Local Radio.

The Daily Service is a religious service that's mainly pre-recorded these days, first carried on the BBC in 1928, and it was shunted to longwave only in 1991.

In 2024, with the end of a specific longwave schedule, it shifted to BBC Radio 4 Extra, and I can only assume that its current slot, 9.45am to 10am, won't be the slot used on BBC local radio.

I looked it up so you don't have to.

46% of the UK identify as Christian, but only 6% are actually practising.

You've got to hand it to them.

The BBC is also stopping running a 24-hour radio newsroom for the BBC World Service in London for the first time in its history.

know.

And I was that person, and I did go and ask, and there was one BBC local radio station in my area, So I went and knocked on the door and said, you know, can I have a job? And they said, you've got to go away and get some experience.

And, of course, I was only 16.

I

So there are plenty of little local community radio stations in the UK now.

Mm-hmm.

BBC Local Radio have had millions of cutbacks now, but they're still going and they still like to involve local people as much as possible.

Mm-hmm.

Well done to you.

I don't know if anyone's done a song called Papua New Guinea, but I'm trying to get a job on BBC Local Radio just in case it still exists after Wednesday.

So, you know, I've got to come up with these kind of things.

Very funny comment from Badger Badger.

So Aston Villa I still occasionally do their Premier League games.

And now they, they've been in Europe for four seasons in a row, and it's, you know, considering the situation with, that's been talked about a lot with BBC Local Radio, I, I'm really grateful, and I think it's brilliant that we still do the commentaries on the European matches.

So I've been able to go to games abroad, which is a very different experience 'cause, uh, you know, Radio 5 Live, they will take with them a pundit, and an engineer, and a producer.

Um, for our games, uh, Gary Thompson, our pundit, does it in the studio Watching it off the telly.

I think it's, i- it's just one of the best jobs in the world.

And the fact that I do get the European experiences thrown in is, i- is good.

Um, BBC local radio as, as we know, is going through difficult times.

So I think it's, you know, just carry on for as long as I'm wanted.