BBC East

Television BBC East's television output (broadcast on BBC One) consists of its flagship regional news service BBC Look East, as well as 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 Suffolk, BBC Essex, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Radio Northampton 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 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 enabled programmes to be broadcast from Norwich purely for East Anglia on the 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 launch of regional BBC television news in September 1957 initially saw East Anglia being covered by the service for London and the South East, but in June 1959, with the forthcoming launch of Anglia Television in mind, the Corporation gave the go-ahead to create a TV operation in Norwich with the purpose of transmitting a bespoke ten-minute news bulletin for the region each weekday. The BBC's general policy was to ensure a regional TV news service was launched ahead of the regional ITV franchise. The first TV news bulletin for the east from St Catherine's Close was broadcast at 6.05pm on 5 October 1959, nearly four weeks ahead of the launch of Anglia. Until 1980, regional radio programming was provided by an East Anglia opt-out on BBC Radio 4, 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 Norwich, 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 local radio studios and newsrooms in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Northampton, Ipswich, and Dunstable. ==See also==