Response from Simon Cornes BBC Radio Derby
----------
Thanks for getting in touch about the planned changes to our evening schedule.

Over recent months we have carried out a full review of our schedule after 7pm and, driven primarily by a change in listeners' lifestyles, we have decided to make a number of major changes.

The end of the "9 to 5" culture and the rise in people using the internet in the evening has led to a decrease in people sitting down to watch television together and an increase in the audience available to listen to the radio. With almost all commercial radio in the East Midlands no longer local or even regional in the evening, we feel it is part of our public service remit to now broadcast more accessible local radio into the evening rather than super-serving fans of a particular genre of music.

Clearly the loyal fans of the current output will be extremely disappointed by the ending of some very long running programmes; however, we have taken these decisions in a bid to serve a wider number of East Midlands licence fee payers at a time of day when there is now a genuine lack of "local radio".

The new schedule will allow us to react to breaking news in the region in a way that is currently impossible, it will allow us to broadcast through until 1am and it will allow us to introduce fully local news, rather than regional news, late into the evening later in 2011.

If you wish to make further representations about the planned changes, then Stuart Thomas is the Head of Regional and Local Programmes for BBC East Midlands. He can be contacted at BBC, London Road , Nottingham , NG2 4UU .

Simon Cornes
Editor
BBC Radio Derby

-------------

to which I replied...

------------

well you can never have enough news and sport can you?

I assume that in not "super-serving fans of a particular genre of music", that you will be taking "Dhamaka", "The Beat", "The African and Caribbean Show", "A Touch of Soul", "Aaj Kal" off the air too?

or is it just British Culture you've got a problem with?