25th February 2024
Dear Readers
The other evening, BBC1 North West Tonight’s main anchor Roger Johnson reported on the MPs in the North West who signed a No Confidence Motion in the Speaker of the House of Commons, who is the MP for the folk living in Chorley, the Right Hon. Sir Lindsay Hoyle. Roger Johnson faithfully reported there were three Conservative MPs in the North West who had submitted a Motion of No Confidence in Sir. Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker: These were:
- Dr Kieran Mullan, Conservative MP for Crewe and Nantwich
- Sir Graham Brady, Conservative MP for Altrincham and Sale West
- Sir Chris Green, Conservative MP for Bolton West
Cumbrian Stats Get Missed off NW Totals
It’s good for folk in Greater Manchester/ Cheshire to be informed: For BBC NW to tell them MPs in their area don’t have confidence in the Speaker of the House of Commons. However, Cumbrians (200,000 of whom live in BBC1 NW’s transmission area) also have such an MP. His name is Sir. John Stevenson, the Conservative MP for Carlisle, who also submitted a Motion of No Confidence in the Speaker. But Carlisle is outside BBC NW’s transmission area, thus BBC NW does not cover it!
The BBC in the North West does not just miss Cumbrian MPs who vote a certain way: During the Covid 19 Pandemic, NW Regional TV broadcasts often missed Carlisle/ West Cumbria from Covid 19 totals, or deaths. In Sports coverage, broadcasters show Cumbrian teams in lower-case along with teams far from NW England.
Cumbrians must be so pleased that their local and Regional TV-services miss MPs- and much else- in their own county!
Your Regional TV should give Information about Your area
Now, BBC1 North West Tonight advertises as covering North West England, so it should cover all of NW England. For folk living in Lancashire and South Cumbria, the English North West stretches from Cheshire to the Scottish Border. It follows that viewers of BBC1 North West Tonight expect broadcasters to include Cumbrian information in NW Regional statistics. This is plainly not happening!
In terms of geographical area Cumbria covers almost half of the English North West. It follows that for the purposes of Regional identity and geographic- appropriate coverage for northern NW viewers, NW broadcasters must cover Cumbria. Broadcasters must include Cumbria in Regional statistics, include Cumbrian sports teams and cover Cumbrian news.
Cutting off at Regional TV Transmission areas is Unacceptable for northern NW England
Since both BBC NW and ITV1 Granada Reports don’t like going north of transmission boundaries, northern NW viewers get poor geographic coverage. There have been occasions when viewers in Millom, who can only get BBC NW and ITV1 Granada, would be right to feel aggrieved. The NW Regional bulletins often miss the MP for Millom because most of the Copeland Constituency (which includes Millom) is north of the transmission area. So, if the Constituency changes hands, or the MP says something important for the area, Millom folk won’t find out. Not from their so-called “local” TV News!
And that is not all. Anyone who has watched ITV1 Granada’s The Granada Debate soon discovers how geographically-inclusive of NW England that programme is: Inevitably the MPs are from Greater Manchester or Merseyside, only sometimes are Lancashire MPs on the show. I have never known a Cumbrian MP to feature on ITV1 Granada’s political programme. That is despite the fact that the ITV1 Granada transmission area includes the homes of over 100,000 Cumbrians: The ITV1 Granada transmission area also extends across part/ all of three Cumbrian political Constituencies!
There’s a Remedy for Geographic-Inappropriate Regional TV Coverage
The good news is that viewers, with a wider choice of local and Regional TV services available online, don’t have to put up with “local” news that’s not local. If you live in South Cumbria or northern Lancashire and tire of the Metropolitan, Manchester/ Liverpool centric offering of “local” news you can change it. You can write to broadcasters for BBC NW and ITV1 Granada to remind them that most of the English NW lies North of the Ribble. You can ask broadcasters to recognise this. If you have family and friends who tire of “local” news being mainly about places 50 to 100 miles to the south encourage them to complain too.
If the response from BBC NW and ITV1 Granada is unacceptable one can write to the local MP and to OFCOM. Then one can shop around more more geographic-appropriate alternatives, such as ITV1 Border Lookaround which covers Cumbria very well. Thus, ITV1 Border Lookaround combined with the Lancs Live website would provide geographic-appropriate news for northern NW England. Then one can write back to NW Regional TV broadcasters explaining why one feels they must seek these alternative news-sources out.
In a previous article, I pointed out that boycotting NW Regional TV combined with Protest rallies outside NW Regional TV headquarters can be very effective. These draw attention to broadcasters that viewers in Cumbria and northern Lancashire are seriously put-out by the offerings of Regional TV broadcasts. You can read about how viewers can mobilise to bring maximum pressure on broadcasters to change their output for northern NW England here: https://northwestisnorthwest.org/2024/01/in-2024-its-time-for-viewers-to-unite-to-deal-with-poor-regional-tv-coverage-for-northern-nw-england-and-isle-of-man/.
Non- Inclusion of Cumbrian Statistics betrays a Reluctance of NW England TV Broadcasters to Cover Cumbria
The failure of broadcasters for BBC1 North West Tonight and ITV1 Granada Reports to include Cumbrian figures, statistics and events betrays a wider issue: That issue is that NW Regional TV broadcasters don’t like to cover Cumbria because they think most of their viewers- who live along the M62 corridor- won’t like it. It’s a case of The Majority Rules, so viewers in rural South Cumbria and North Lancashire simply have to put up with it! ITV1 Granada certainly has that excuse since it relies on advertising revenue, but the BBC in the NW of England does not.
However, the 750,000 potential viewers of BBC1 NW and ITV1 Granada Regional TV output who live in northern Lancashire and South Cumbria are also customers. Arguably, they have more leverage to get better Regional TV news-coverage, via combination of ITV1 Border Lookaround and the Lancs Live website. Viewers in Merseyside are hardly going to switch to BBC1 Wales Today if their 35% coverage is reduced to 25% because of some more Lancashire/ Cumbria coverage. There is a That’s TV Manchester (Freeview Channel 7) that folk in Greater Manchester could switch to. However, folk in the northern half of Greater Manchester identify more as Lancashire so there will not be a huge switchover from them should either BBC NW or ITV1 Granada feature another 10% more coverage of Cumbria and Lancashire.
If viewers who live north of the River Ribble realise it, they have a Power of Boycott over NW Regional broadcasters that viewers along the M62 Corridor lack. Were they to exercise it, en-masse, it would concentrate minds in NW Regional broadcast headquarters in Media City. Broadcasters would not want to lose 10% of viewers overnight, it may persuade BBC1 NW broadcasters to include all of Cumbria in news-coverage!
BBC NW should be in trouble for not covering the Isle of Man agin like was no live budget ln tynwlad on bbc there not even bordcast hole isle of man budget last week one that birng lot not happy people on the island so much that some mhk not happy and asking people on social media about no confidence vote in the Isle of Man’s government also education minister the day after got fired for not agreeing to certain things of the chief minister not one bit off that on bbc nw
Hopefully if there is a new government of the Isle of Man they tackle this issue with the BBC doing nothing but take moeny of the isle of man public for TV licence that doesn’t even do any public broadcast service on the island yes snow Television or radio service from the BBC broadcast live from the island
think time we organizer protest outside broadcasting house Douglas where the BBC shares officers with manx radio and one outside the Manx Parliament tynwald