The BBC has one of the biggest and most popular web sites on the planet and its news service is second to none. Its regional web pages (left) provide a local news service for every county in England - except Cheshire! The BBC totally ignores licence payers in Cheshire with no local radio station and the only web page is for traffic information. Although our own local radio station, Canalside Community Radio (CCR-fm)
does what it can with its very limited resources, we, the people of Cheshire, are being short changed by having to pay through our licence fee for something that we are not getting.
If you agree that it is wrong and would like to press the BBC to play fair with us, please consider adding your name to the online petition set up to demonstrate support.
If the BBC do nothing, then the flip side is that it should give CCR-fm more leverage to push for funding as the only Public Service Broadcaster serving East Cheshire in a similar way that Channel 4 has been attempting to gain a share of the BBC's funding.
The web link above also provides a view of the Blog where you can see the shenanigans that surround the subject. It will be interesting to note what happens when the Beeb moves many of its Sports and Children's programmes staff to Salford Quays in 2010. Many of these staff will be moving to Cheshire - I wonder how quickly that will result in a Cheshire news page?
I put this page up after intensive discusion on NewsWatch, a BBC
watchdog programme, in 2008. NewsWarch again aired this subject
in February 2010 with the same bland pointless response from the
management. The BBC Trust rejected a spending proposal for this
service. They think that if we live in Cheshire we are more likely
to be interested in Manchester and Liverpool! Well I've got news
for them - I've been to Liverpool twice in the past 35 years and
to Manchester on average less than once a year for the past 25
years. That's how interested I am in them.
Come on BBC, wake up to reality!
