As there are only five slots available per region, they've prioritised the counties that border on Greater London and for whom the greatest proportion of viewers have BBC London television inflicted on them.

If a sixth slot became available in the future I think it would go to Radio Kent, then BBC Sussex would probably be next in line after that. BBC Surrey and BBC Sussex are mostly the same anyway.

The Kendal / South Lakes group of transmitters carry BBC North West services, so will take BBC Radio Lancashire, together with Cumbria, Manchester, Merseyside & Stoke. BBC North East & Cumbria only covers Carlisle and the northern part of Cumbria.

As the Kendal group was re-engineered some time ago, it could potentially replace distant services such as Merseyside and Stoke with nearby services such as Tees, York or Leeds but all of these fall outside the basic coverage area of the tv transmitters.

In general, Cumbria is considered to be in the north west, so bearing that in mind, BBC Radio Lancashire would be an obvious choice. Cumbria also borders the Yorkshire Dales, so Radio York and Radio Leeds would possibly be preferred to Radio Lancashire in these areas, so Radio Lancashire becomes a less obvious choice.

That said, none of these radio stations actually have overlapping editorial coverage with the tv transmitters. With people complaining about not being able to receive their favoured choice in other regions (where overlaps do exist eg Sussex and Kent with Crystal Palace), I'm guessing that the BBC has stepped back from adding "out of area" stations. So, for the moment at least, the Channel Islands get 2 services rather than 5, the BBC doesn't take advantage of Kendal's unique transport stream to customise stations in South Lakeside and Radio Leeds doesn't launch in the BBC North East & Cumbria region.

I realise that - it's not a great loss (frankly they should have just kept it as Southern Counties Radio), but it's just an extension of the broadcast local news deficiency for this area, where most of the local news appears on stations we can't receive!

Observations from Emley Moor, Sheffield, Belmont & Bilsdale:

Added to Emley Moor:
LCN 720 BBC Radio York
LCN 721 BBC Radio Humberside
LCN 734 BBC Radio Sheffield

Added to Sheffield:
LCN 720 BBC Radio York
LCN 734 BBC Radio Sheffield

Added to Belmont:
LCN 719 BBC Radio Norfolk
LCN 720 BBC Radio Nottingham
LCN 721 BBC Radio Humberside
LCN 734 BBC Radio Sheffield

Added to Bilsdale:
LCN 720 BBC Radio York
LCN 721 BBC Radio Cumbria
LCN 722 BBC Tees

BBC Radio Leeds (SID 6154) continues in test mode from Bilsdale with no LCN allocated.

Looks like North West is the last then!

Has Jersey and Guernsey been added to Fremont Point yet?

The additions were later than usual. Emley Moor and Bilsdale showed up first, followed by Belmont. The North West and Channel Islands should have been added at, roughly, the same time. [Confirmation needed from viewers in those areas.]

The changes happened just in time to see the Bilsdale line-up before atmospheric conditions caused the signal to break up.

Expected changes took place on the Winter Hill muxes at approx 12:45pm -

BBC Cumbria, BBC Lancashire, BBC Merseyside all added as expected.

BBC Humberside, BBC Sheffield, and BBC York entries appeared in the SDT from adjoining regions.

Also, a couple of G_MAN services changed LCN - detailed elsewhere.

The 100kbps data stream PID 7204, linked to the Red Button service has disappeared from BBC A transport streams over the last couple of days. It is still defined in the PMT but definitely no longer in the transport stream. It could be that it will be left in the PMT - data stream PID 7401 is defined in the PMT and has been for many years, although I have never seen that data stream present. Nevertheless, it has released a further 100kbps to null packets and potentially available for an additional audio stream (or available to improve the audio quality of existing streams).

Changes at Bilsdale & Emley Moor were also at around 12:45, Belmont followed between 12:45 and 13:00.

Claldbeck

Radio, Cumbria , Tees, York, Newcastle, turned on around 1.30 pm.

Plus Radio Scotland and Nan Gael which has been on for a few years

Should have been the same time as Bilsdale as it's the same transport stream.

I extracted the data from PID 7201 yesterday to check for any changes resulting from the removal of data stream PID 7204. I've just checked the sid.cf file from the extract and noticed that H&W & C&W are now correctly defined so the names should display correctly on the BBC Local Radio MHEG slate.

@NmBLRCW|BBC Coventry & Warwickshire|
@NmBLRHW|BBC Hereford & Worcester|