Louise Bolotin’s long-running campaign for better representation for Cheshire on the BBC may be finally achieved in 2009.
O'Brien
Bolotin’s campaign received an unexpected fillip on Friday when Tamsin O’Brien, the boss of the BBC in the North West, revealed on News 24 that plans have been drawn up to launch a Cheshire news page and boost other local coverage of the county within the BBC website.
However, O’Brien added, approval is still required from the BBC Trust and the outcome may not be known until early 2009.
The revelation came during a discussion presided over by the BBC’s media correspondent Ray Snoddy when he brought Bolotin and O’Brien into the studio last Friday night.
The studio discussion was partly prompted by a film broadcast in late February when a camera crew from Newswatch (BBC News24) went to Cheshire to film Andrew Oldfield expressing his fury at the lack of news coverage of Cheshire by the BBC.
Bolotin
The discussion on Friday offered viewers a feisty studio debate between Chester-based journalist Louise Bolotin, who has been campaigning for more than two years for improved news coverage and Tamsin O’Brien, head of regional and local programming for BBC North West.
O’Brien’s revelation clearly took Bolotin by surprise but she still responded that “2009 wasn’t good enough considering the BBC’s news online website had just had an expensive revamp and it would have been easy to add an extra templated page for a Cheshire news feed.”
Cheshire, with just under one million residents, is the only county without its own dedicated website despite the county being home to a larger population than several other English counties.
Subscribe to the Wrap - How-Do's essential weekly round-up of all that matters in North West media:
Featured articles
The How-Do Awards – celebrating the best work of the North West’s leading broadcasting, publishing and communications companies, are now open for entries and table reservations for the dinner on 24 AprilREAD
The North West’s media folk who wield the greatest combination of influence, power and employment, primarily in the region but also, in many cases, well beyond.
Comments (1)
