Regional Variations in The UK
The BBC has traditionally offered regional variations across many of its services. The Home Service and its successor Radio 4 provided regional variations until the late 1970s when Local Radio took over most of these responsibilities. BBC One and the BBC Television Service have provided variations in the English regions throughout most of their history, and continues to do so today (mainly News and current affairs programming). In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, BBC One has to a large degree been operated as a separate television channel, rather than a variant on BBC One as broadcast in England. BBC Two has in the past broadcast variations within the English regions, though now only has variations for each of the Constituent Countries of the United Kingdom. BBC Choice also briefly had regional variations for these areas.
ITV was originally established as a network of some 14 separate companies, each designated a region of coverage (see History of ITV). Each company provided a mixture of local programming for its own coverage area, as well as airing nationwide networked programmes (usually produced by one of the contractors). ITV has traditionally included more regional variations than the BBC, though since consolidation and majority ownership by ITV plc regional variations on the network are far fewer, and often no more than the minimum requirements as set by Ofcom.
Channel 4 and Five provide no regional variations for programming or continuity, but offer variation during advertising breaks. S4C provided an alternative to Channel 4 in Wales, and broadcasts some of Channel 4's programmes, both simultaneously and slightly behind; though this is technically not a regional variation, rather a separate station in its own right, it is nonetheless frequently described under the heading of 'regional variations' in many newspapers and magazines. In 2009, S4C ceased from broadcasting Channel 4 programmes altogether when analogue television transmitters in Wales were switched off as part of the United Kingdom-wide Digital switchover.
Sky News and Sky1 also provide a variant of their stations for the Republic of Ireland, although specific Sky News coverage for the Republic of Ireland is extremely limited, due in part to the channel with Irish content closing on 3 November 2006, and Sky1's variant is purely an advertising opt-out.
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