Almost entirely unnoticed, broadcasting regulator Ofcom has changed the BBC’s operating licence – to potentially allow the Corporation to take the local out of local radio.
The nuance hinges on two almost – but not quite – synonymous expressions: “genuinely local” and “locally made”.
You’d think they were the same? No. If a programme from, say, BBC Hereford and Worcester is “genuinely local”, you’d think it came from a studio in either Hereford or Worcester. Similarly, if it’s “locally made”, you’d expect it to originate from … Hereford or Worcester.
But that’s not how BBC managers in charge of local radio and broadcasting regulator Ofcom interpret the two expressions.
They are crucial because the terms of the BBC’s operating licence – issued and policed by Ofcom – specify how much local radio has to be local both geographically and by the hour. The licence also sets quotas.
Until late 2025, when Ofcom allowed the BBC to make changes, each station had to broadcast 95 hours of “original, locally-made programming” each week. Fair enough. However, 91 of these 95 hours could be “shared”, with the same output aired across large “geographic areas”. The only caveat was that the sharing must be between 6am and 7pm.
Bizarrely, ironically, and probably unintentionally, until December 2025, that left four (of the 95) hours that had to be broadcast after 7pm by each station alone. This was the only “original, locally-made programming” the licence requires.
Of course, the BBC claimed to do more than the minimum. Before December last year, all 40 stations broadcast their own programmes between 6am and 2pm every day (even after cuts approved by Ofcom in 2023 already let most stations share their hours on air from 6am until 7pm, seven days a week).
In 2025, claiming it would “explicitly secure” single station weekday output between 6am and 2pm, BBC managers asked Ofcom to approve a licence change that would count 6am-2pm output as quota time only if it was “genuinely” local. All other output shared with “neighbouring stations” would automatically qualify as “locally made”. (If you don’t understand, you’re far from alone.)
This has all come about because Ofcom helpfully rewrote the licence retrospectively to match the BBC’s local radio output in 2025.
The regulator decided that: “In each financial year at least 4,954 hours are allocated on each BBC local radio station to original, locally-made programming. For the purpose of this requirement, ‘original, locally-made programming’ includes programming shared with neighbouring stations broadcast on weekends, or on weekdays before 6am or after 2pm”.
So, to go back to paragraph two, the expression “original, locally-made programming” has different meanings at different times of the day or even the day of the week (and Ofcom still hasn’t defined “neighbouring”).
Massaging the figures
BBC managers had also claimed this would benefit audiences. It wouldn’t do that and didn’t, because nothing actually changed between 6am and 2pm during the week.
The tweak did however benefit the BBC. More output before 6am and after 2pm on weekdays qualified as “local”, so more could be shared. So, for example, an evening programme from Media City, Salford is now considered “locally made” by BBC Tees in Middlesbrough.
Both the BBC and Ofcom said a tighter definition of “locally made” would “explicitly secure” single station 6am-2pm weekday output. However, it doesn’t: All other regional output is subject to the different – and looser – definition of “locally made”. The sole exception is single national output. Although the BBC hasn’t said anything about this, they could get away with only broadcasting two programmes simultaneously across the entire 40-station network to still comply with the December 2025 version of the licence.
The December 2025 change also allows far more shared output a week to count as “locally-made”, a 40 per cent increase from 91 hours (four less than the quota) to 128 hours (33 more than the quota). (The words “massaging”” and “figures” come to mind.)
In theory, and even more bizarrely, this means the BBC could remove all remaining genuinely local programming on weekdays between 6am and 2pm, provided it broadcast enough regional programmes at other times, effectively meaning that genuinely local programmes could be silenced forever.
No one is suggesting that BBC managers currently plan this, but they could now do it, without having to tell Ofcom and without breaching the licence. As money gets tighter, temptation grows.
Politically, at a time when the BBC is under attack for being too metropolitan, this “terminological flexibility” means each station – based on early and spring 2026 schedules – will exceed its quota by an average of at least nine hours per week, which looks good for audiences and critics.
The December 2025 change also allows 128 hours of shared output a week to count as “locally-made” (33 hours more than the quota), rather than the previous 91 (which was four hours less than the quota). Keep up with the maths at the back ….
Unheard and out of mind
Regulator Ofcom did fulfil its remit by consulting on the change. However, arguments have ensued about whether it did so within the spirit of its own guidelines on accountability and transparency.
The BBC’s application for the change was published – if not prominently – on the Ofcom website and announced to interested e-mail subscribers. Ofcom did not however tell the BBC to inform its (local radio) listeners.
The exercise attracted fewer than 20 responses, one from the BBC itself.
The December 2025 Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) BBC Charter Renewal Green Paper said the government was “assessing whether to reinforce commitments to local radio services”.
Ofcom’s handling of BBC local radio changes in late 2025 suggests that regulation itself needs strengthening and that all operating licences granted under a new charter must specify single station output hours and include a tighter definition of sharing. Only these measures will guarantee the long-term survival of BBC local radio.