17:23 Wednesday 16th May 2012
Drive BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
CHRIS MANN: Following the BBC Trust’s local radio licence review, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is to keep its Peterborough studios. Paul Stainton will broadcast a new county-wide breakfast programme from the city from August. The remainder of the station’s output will continue to come from Cambridge. The station’s editor, David Harvey, said the new programme would maintain quality journalism that would appeal to the whole county. He joined me a short time ago with more details of why this has all been necessary. (TAPE)
DAVID HARVEY: Well two things have come together Chris at the same time. The BBC Trust have reviewed what local radio does, why we exist, and what people want from their local BBC. That’s a process that takes place every five years. And it received some 14,000 responses in various forms. And at the same time, as we’ve been talking about for some time now, Delivery Quality First has been taking place, which is a review of how we spend our money, effectively, on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, or your money, the licence fee payers’ money. In the last settlement that the BBC did around the licence fee with the Government, the licence fee was fixed until 2017, and then there were some additional costs that were taken on board. The BBC have to fund the World Service and the BBC Monitoring, and also fund a partnership with Welsh Channel 4, and support the set-up of new local TV services, and the potential roll-out of high-speed broadband. So all that coming together, as well as obviously the recession, and the general squeeze on public service bodies, has meant we have less money to play with, here at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
CHRIS MANN: And BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, let’s point out, is quite unusual. It’s got two centres, both Cambridge and Peterborough, which is quite rare in the UK. Now are they going to continue? Continue reading “Peterborough Studios Home to BBC Cambridgeshire Breakfast Show”