Commissioning

Regional broadcasting in England is divided into twelve distinct areas, which are largely dictated by analogue transmitter boundaries.

The core of the broadcast offering in television produced by these BBC English Regions is in the area of news, politics and current affairs. Much investment has gone into the look and newsgathering firepower of our regional news programmes at 1830 on BBC ONE, and they're now the most watched news strand on the BBC.

In the last few years, our relationship with the independent sector has grown significantly. Independent production companies now produce our flagship Politics Show for London, South East and East Midlands. We also plan to commission independents to produce three out of our 7 Football League programmes which will launch in January 2010 for a 16-week series.

Following BBC Trust approval, English Regions is investing in further plans to create additional linear programming which can be journalistic and/or celebratory; a story or an event of significance in your region. Please contact your local Series Editor with ideas and details on commissioning process.

This year we have commissioned independents to produce local output to coincide with network programmes, in order to increase the impact of these programmes in the schedule. Examples of this are England's Green & Pleasant Land, Nature of Britain and, coming up, History of the World.

Page last updated 30 September 2009