Wales, Staffordshire - what's the difference?

A quirky story has appeared on the BBC website today - Audlem in Cheshire (on the border of Staffordshire) wants to become Welsh, even though it is 9 miles from the border with Wales.

Village residents are running a poll to drum up support, although some local inhabitants would prefer to join Shropshire. It's not clear why (apart from free prescriptions) they are so desperate to leave Cheshire, but as usual finding the story meant scouring various regional pages because of the lack of a Cheshire news feed.

Rebranding for BBC News

The BBC has announced it is to spend yet more money revamping its news service. Following an across-the-board redesign for News Online in March, Aunty is to rebrand all its news channels using various versions of its red globe logo. The exercise will cost £550,000 and see channels such as News 24 renamed and regional news programmes have their own colour schemes.

It all sounds very nice and will undoubtedly look very pretty, while strengthening the BBC's news branding and global image. Here in Cheshire, though, it's hard not to see it as yet another lost opportunity to provide licence payers with equality of news coverage. The truly cynical no doubt wonder how it is that Aunty can afford to spend so much money on looks yet cite an inadequate licence fee settlement (and thus poverty) when it comes to providing a couple of pages of content for the licence-paying residents of Cheshire...

And still more media coverage...

The media site, Journalism.co.uk, has also picked up on last Friday's Newswatch broadcast and published a story on the campaign. You can read it here.

Too much too zoo...

Another baby giraffe has been born at Chester Zoo. And BBC News Online has chosen to report the birth. That is the fifth zoo story we've had since the beginning of this year. While it's good to know that these rare Rothschilds are surviving in captivity, it's hardly the most important thing happening in our county.

We have local elections in less than a month and for Cheshire, this will also mean the abolition of a number of district councils, the loss of our county council and the forced imposition of two unitary authorities by the government that will split our historic county in two forever. The BBC has only once reported on this, some months back, despite it having been on the political agenda for well over a year. This massive change is going to affect almost 1 million people. If this was taking place in Liverpool or Manchester, it's fair to assume it would be receiving saturation coverage.

We get bloody giraffes again, instead!

Meet Kate Simms...

Yesterday I mentioned Kate Simms, the Chester-based correspondent for regional news programme North West Tonight. Shockingly, Kate is the sole correspondent covering Cheshire, a large county that is largely rural and is not easy to get around even by road (unless you're using the M6 - try going east-west and see how long it takes). Should there be a breaking story over in Macclesfield, this might explain why such items rarely get covered - I daresay by the time she's managed to get there the excitement is all over...

Kate Simms is also responsible for online news coverage. Take a look at her page, as she is positively inviting the licence payers of Cheshire to contact her if they have a story they think needs reporting. So, give her a call or send her an email and suggest some news stories for her to cover - we all know there's lots happening across our county, but she may need a helping hand.

Only 5 days late...

Earlier this year, we reported how the BBC was a whole week late reporting on the "scandal" of the road markings at Chester's newly revamped railway station.

Aunty has done it again, albeit slightly quicker this time. Today's groundbreaking news on the BBC website concerns the collapse of the ancient city Walls. This event happened on the afternoon of Thursday 3 April and was duly reported in the weekly Chester Chronicle the very next day. The council put out its own press release yesterday and today's free edition Midweek Chronicle has a further update on the state of the Walls.

Interestingly, the BBC report acknowledges that the collapse happened last week, so why has it taken 5 days to publish the story?

While in London last week, recording the Newswatch debate with BBC head of local and regional programming, Tamsin O'Brien, I learned (to my complete astonishment) that the BBC does have a Chester correspondent based in the city. Her name is Kate Simms. Which rather begs the question of what exactly she is doing to earn her salary - a salary paid for by Cheshire licence payers. If she was filing news this late on a newspaper, she could expect to be fired. Yet because she reports for the BBC, we continue to get a shoddy service of either late news or no news. Once again, Cheshire licence payers are bottom of the heap when it comes to supplying an up-to-date news service.

More coverage

Some unexpected coverage of the campaign has popped up on the internet, in an unusual quarter.

Garden design experts Real Oasis, based in Cheshire, appear to have seen the TV debate on News24 last week, and subsequently written about it in their blog. Thanks, guys. Spreading the word is even more important now - it's time to keep the pressure on so that the BBC Trust approves the proposals.

More press coverage

How Do has today run a fresh story on the campaign, this time reporting on my TV appearance on NewsWatch last Friday. You can read it here.

Feedback on the television debate has so far been very positive, with most people saying they were not convinced by O'Brien's arguments.

If you saw the programme and would like to comment, do please add your views to the blog.

We are still working on getting a clip up on YouTube, after experiencing technical problems. We hope to resolve this as soon as possible.

Transmission truth

Good evening, viewers.

If you missed Newswatch tonight, don't forget it's still available on the internet until Friday 11 April. We'll be aiming to get the clip on YouTube asap, too.

I think we can all agree that there was the surprise announcement of a Cheshire news page in the offing. They have until January 2009 to make good on the promises.

In the meantime, the campaign is not going away. We'll be keeping up the pressure this year, particularly on the BBC Trust (the governing body) as it's their ultimate decision. So we'll still be blogging and reporting and keeping an eye on the state of play.

But there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel.

Tune in tonight!

Filming went ahead as planned yesterday at BBC Television Centre.

Newswatch will be broadcast tonight at 8.45pm on News24. There is a repeat tomorrow (Saturday 5 April) on BBC1 on Breakfast. I'm not sure where in the schedule for the programme it will be - probably towards the end of the show, but don't take my word for it.

if you miss that too, you can watch it online for a week on the Newswatch page.

Without giving too much away, there is an interesting revelation made by my debating partner, Tamsin O'Brien, who is head of local and regional programming for the north-west at the BBC.

We might yet see a change before too long. Then again, maybe not.

Tune in to see whether there really is light at the end of the tunnel.