''UK Today'' was a BBC television news programme shown on most digital satellite and

digital terrestrial Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

versions of

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, ...

and BBC Two. It consisted of a round up of stories from the BBC's various local news programmes where it had not initially been possible to show regional variations. The programme was eventually replaced by digital feeds of each regional news service, finishing in 2002.

History

When the BBC started digital broadcasts, the various English regional versions of BBC One and Two were not available. BBC One carried variants only for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, whilst no variations were broadcast for BBC2; instead it had been decided to carry four variants of the new

BBC Choice BBC Choice was a British digital television channel which was owned by the BBC and was launched on 23 September 1998. It was the first British TV channel to broadcast exclusively in digital format, as well as the BBC's second non-analogue-terres ...

. Lack of English variations on Satellite was due to a single broadcast feed being able to cover the entirety of England (in reality it could cover much of north and western Europe) whilst on digital terrestrial it was due to the regional broadcast centres in England not yet being equipped to 'opt in and out' of the digital network when digital terrestrial broadcasts began in 1998. This presented a problem with two obvious solutions – either just show the BBC South East version of the channels (already used as a 'sustaining feed' in case of failure at the regional centres), or create new programming to fill the gaps. The decision was taken to go with the second option, although any non-news programming (such as the regional political slot) was filled by the South East region. Despite the name, ''UK Today'' very rarely broadcast to the whole of the UK as BBC One Scotland, BBC One Northern Ireland, and BBC One Wales were available with their own news programming from the very start of digital enjoying their own satellite feeds and being fully equipped for digital terrestrial. Only BBC Two would carry UK Today to the whole of the UK. In 2000, '' BBC Breakfast'', a simulcast programme between BBC One and

BBC News 24 BBC News (also known as the BBC News Channel) is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel for BBC News. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 5:30 pm as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic telev ...

was launched. Regional opt-outs on BBC News 24 carried ''UK Today'' across the UK. Main bulletins at 1.30pm and 6.30pm were originally broadcast from within the BBC News 24 studio (N8), and simulcast on that channel though the set was later moved to the same studio as the BBC One news bulletins (N6).

Gradual demise

UK Today was gradually replaced on BBC One as regional centres were upgraded for digital terrestrial broadcasting and the non-England versions of BBC Two went digital on both satellite and terrestrial in 2001, replacing the four regional variants of

. In 2002 the satellite version of BBC One England started carrying the London region's programme, '' BBC London News'', although an interactive service did allow viewers to select one of four alternate regional programmes, including ''

South Today ''BBC South Today'' is the BBC's regional television news service for the south of England, covering Hampshire, Isle of Wight, West Sussex, much of Dorset and parts of Berkshire, Surrey and Wiltshire. Since 2000, an opt-out of the main program ...

'' and ''

North West Tonight ''BBC North West Tonight'' is the BBC's regional television news programme covering North West England and the Isle of Man. Produced by BBC North West, the programme airs at 1.30pm (as ''North West Today''), 6.30pm and 10.30pm, with shorter bu ...

'' for the main 6.30pm news bulletin. In May 2003 all regional services were made available to satellite viewers by effectively broadcasting seventeen separate feeds of BBC One, one for each region. (see

BBC UK regional TV on satellite #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

)

Today

Due to the minimal regional broadcasting on BBC Two in England, it was not seen as cost-effective to create digital versions of these regions. On satellite, this would have meant as many individual feeds of BBC Two as BBC One whilst in the case of digital terrestrial, a decision to encode all BBC services other than BBC One using the more efficient

statistical multiplexing Statistical multiplexing is a type of communication link sharing, very similar to dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA). In statistical multiplexing, a communication channel is divided into an arbitrary number of variable bitrate digital channels or ...

technique made it technically and economically much harder to provide variations without either equipping each regional centre with costly equipment or using the same method as for BBC One and suffering reduced picture quality as a result. Consequently, short ''BBC London'' bulletins continued to be broadcast throughout England on BBC Two. In 2004, all regional news bulletins were moved to BBC One and in 2006, the last remaining regional programme, ''The

Super League Show The ''Super League Show'' is the BBC's principal rugby league programme, shown on BBC One in the North of England on Monday evenings, repeated nationally on BBC Two on Tuesday lunchtimes and also on BBC iPlayer. The programme, produced by PDI ...

'', shown in some northern regions was also moved. Although it was still technically possible for most regions to opt out on analogue, any variation in programming was now rare. The

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

service

Ceefax Ceefax (, punning on "seeing facts") was the world's first teletext information service and a forerunner to the current BBC Red Button service. Ceefax was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended, after 38 years of broadcasting, at 23:32:19 BST ( ...

, did still carry regional content on BBC Two until analogue switch-off, however. During the 2006 Commonwealth Games, ''BBC Breakfast'' was shown on BBC Two, so regional opt-outs on the digital variant in England were replaced by a newspaper review for digital viewers. During the Wimbledon tennis competitions of 2008, a scheduled news bulletin was moved to BBC Two. As some regions had already switched to digital-only TV, these areas received only BBC London News instead of their local news.

History

Gradual demise

Today

See also