BBC East is one of BBC's English Regions covering

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to t ...

, northern

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-e ...

, and the majority of

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It ...

Bedfordshire Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gov ...

and

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

. It is headquartered in The Forum,

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the Episcopal see, See of ...

since 2003. It was also separated into two areas, one with the East area covering mostly in Norfolk, Suffolk & Essex, and another from the West area which covers from Cambridge, serving mostly Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and the three counties.

Services

Television

''BBC Easts television output (broadcast on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

) consists of its flagship regional news service '' BBC Look East'', including an opt-out service for the west of the region and a 30-minute Sunday morning politics programme. Former programmes include ''Weekend'', ''East on Two'', ''Matter of Fact'' and the football magazine show '' Late Kick Off'' (produced by the independent production company Kevin Piper Media).

Radio

The region is the controlling centre for

BBC Radio Norfolk BBC Radio Norfolk is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Norfolk. It broadcasts on FM, AM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios at The Forum in Norwich. According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audience of 14 ...

BBC Radio Suffolk BBC Radio Suffolk is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Suffolk. It broadcasts on FM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios on St Matthews Street in Ipswich. According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audience ...

, BBC Essex,

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire BBC Radio Cambridgeshire is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Cambridgeshire. It broadcasts on FM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios at the Cambridge Business Park on Cowley Road in Cambridge. According to ...

BBC Radio Northampton BBC Radio Northampton is the BBC's local radio station serving the county of Northamptonshire. It broadcasts on FM, DAB, digital TV and via BBC Sounds from studios on Abington Street in Northampton. According to RAJAR, the station has a we ...

and BBC Three Counties Radio. On weekdays, all six stations open transmission at 4am with a shared regional early morning show before carrying local programming between 6am and 10pm. There is also a shared regional programme broadcast across the stations from 10pm to 1am on weeknights, except for BBC Essex who has a stand-alone schedule, and other shared programmes at weekends.

Online and Interactive

''BBC East'' also produces regional news and local radio pages for

BBC Red Button BBC Red Button is a brand used for digital interactive television services provided by the BBC, and broadcast in the United Kingdom. The services replaced Ceefax, the BBC's analogue teletext service. BBC Red Button's text services were due to cl ...

and the ''BBC Local News'' websites for each county.

History

In the mid-1950s, the BBC had a temporary headquarters in Norwich at No. 35 All Saints Green. In September 1956 they moved to a new, larger headquarters at the nearby St Catherine's Close. From here, editions of radio programmes such as ''Midlands Miscellany'' were broadcast into the Midlands Home Service before the end of 1956. The opening of the

Tacolneston transmitting station The Tacolneston transmitting station is a facility for both analogue and digital VHF/ FM radio and UHF television transmission near Tacolneston, south-west of Norwich, Norfolk, England. It includes a tall guyed steel lattice mast, which wa ...

enabled programmes to be broadcast from Norwich purely for East Anglia on the

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

edition of the Home Service, and regular broadcasts from St Catherine's Close began on Tuesday 5 February 1957. Daily news bulletins for East Anglia began on Monday 10 March 1958, on VHF from the Norwich studios, under the supervision of Richard Robinson. The first television news bulletin for the east from St Catherine's Close was broadcast on 5 October 1959. In 1964, the programme was extended to 20 minutes in length and renamed '' Look East'', a title the programme still goes under today. The Norwich-based operation was initially a satellite of the larger BBC Midland region, based in Birmingham. East Anglia was given greater autonomy within the BBC in 1969 after the ''Broadcasting in the Seventies'' report recommended the large ''Midlands and East Anglia'' region should be split into two. During 1997, an opt-out service (originally titled ''Close Up'') was introduced to provide local bulletins for Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Peterborough and Milton Keynes. This service provided separate teatime and late bulletins Monday to Friday in an area referred to on EPGs as BBC East (West) rather than BBC East (East) which is the sub-region for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. The last of these bulletins was broadcast on Friday 16 December 2022, as a result of the BBC restructuring of regional programming leading to budget cutbacks. St_Catherine's_House,_All_Saints_Green,_Norwich,_2012

St_Catherine's_House,_All_Saints_Green,_Norwich,_2012

Until 1980, regional radio programming was provided by an East Anglia opt-out on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

, consisting largely of daytime news bulletins and a weekday breakfast show, '' Roundabout East Anglia''. The first BBC Local Radio station in the region, Radio Norfolk, was opened on 11 September 1980 and followed by the rollout of stations in Cambridgeshire (1 May 1982), Northamptonshire (16 June 1982), the Three Counties of Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire & Buckinghamshire (24 June 1985), Essex (5 November 1986) and Suffolk (12 April 1990).

Studios

BBC East's main headquarters and studios are based at The Forum on Millennium Plain in

, having moved from St Catherine's Close in 2003. The move to The Forum was a result of a number of factors: the listed status of the building restricted much of what the BBC did there, the location was less central than the BBC wanted, their ideal location being in Norwich city centre, the equipment was becoming old and needed replacing, and the Disability Discrimination Act meant that their headquarters now needed major modifications to comply with the law. BBC East also has radio and television studios at the Cambridge Business Park, on Cowley Road in the city, where Radio Cambridgeshire is based and formerly home to the West opt-out of ''Look East''. Local radio studios and television bureaux are also located in

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of Londo ...

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...

, and

Dunstable Dunstable ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, east of the Chiltern Hills, north of London. There are several steep chalk escarpments, most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the north. Dunstable is t ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:BBC East

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

Mass media in Norfolk Mass media in Suffolk Mass media in Northamptonshire Mass media in Cambridgeshire Mass media in Essex Mass media in Bedfordshire Mass media in Buckinghamshire Mass media in Hertfordshire Television channels and stations established in 1955 1955 establishments in the United Kingdom