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The BBC London region audience is larger than the national audiences of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

BBC London is the BBC English Region producing local radio, television, teletext and online services in London and parts of the surrounding area.

Its output includes the daily BBC London News and the weekly Politics Show on television, the BBC London 94.9 radio station and local coverage of the London area on bbc.co.uk and Ceefax. BBC London News can be viewed thoughout the UK during BBC Breakfast on BBC News 24 at 6:28, 6:58, 7:28 and 7:58.

The region's headquarters are situated on Marylebone High Street in Central London.

BBC London launched on 1 October 2001 following changes to the coverage areas of BBC transmitters allowing for the establishment of new editorial areas to be possible. The main result was a reorganisation of the BBC's South East region; the London area was to break away entirely while a new programme, South East Today was to be created for the new South East region. BBC London as it came to be called replaced the longrunning Newsroom South East.

Greater London and its environs has had a regional BBC television news service for many decades, but the boundaries of the region have always been somewhat nebulous due to the coverage areas of the transmitters used, as television signals do not tend to stick neatly to administrative or historic boundaries. Therefore, while the main focus of "regional" news coverage for this area has always been on the capital itself, it has for much of the BBC's life had to offer coverage of other parts of the "Home Counties" as well.

There were many incarnations of regional news programmes in this area before the current programme was introduced in 2001. These included the London segment of the fondly-remembered Nationwide; in this case, the regional presenters for London were also usually the main presenters of the national sequence of the programme which followed. Other identities for the London area coverage were "London Plus", and finally "Newsroom South East".

Originally, the BBC London and the South East region took in the whole of Greater London, together with parts of Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Sussex, Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire. This meant that sizeable communities which probably deserved dedicated programming of their own — such as Oxford, Luton, Crawley and the Medway towns — were often ill-served by a London-biased programme which was variously based at Television Centre in Shepherds Bush, W12 and Elstree in Hertfordshire before the move to the present studios in Marylebone High Street, also home to the BBC's Governance Unit.

The programme was originally planned to be named London Live and the titles shown were developed by Lambie-Nairn but never shown on screen.

The area created for the BBC London programme to broadcast to now covers a much more tightly-defined area, chiefly London but still including parts of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Berkshire, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex in the programme. There is also some overlap with the editorial areas of other BBC regions in this part of England. Somewhat bizarrely, parts of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Northamptonshire, Berkshire and Gloucestershire now take an opt-out of South Today^[1] — rather than the Midlands region it might be expected to identify more with — while most of Kent and East Sussex is now covered by the new BBC South East region based in Tunbridge Wells, which produces South East Today.^[2]

The television news programme launched as BBC LDN onscreen, an abbreviation of 'London' though it was never referred to as such by presenters.

BBC London refreshed its brand in December 2005, moving away from the Lambie-Nairn graphics standard across BBC regional news.

The BBC London News programme broadcasts daily on BBC One, appearing with short bulletins during BBC Breakfast, after the One O'Clock News and after the Ten O'Clock News. The flagship programme is broadcast between 18:30 and 18:55 each weekday evening, following the end of the Six O'Clock News and is presented by Riz Lateef.

Lateef superseded Emily Maitlis who had been the main presenter of the flagship programme from launch until March 2006 when she left to join BBC News 24 and BBC Two's Newsnight.

Weather forecasts are normally provided by former BBC national forecaster Peter Cockroft, as the region's dedicated weather forecaster, though in Cockroft's absence, a national BBC Weather forecaster presents from the BBC's Weather studio at Television Centre. The forecast is normally presented from the roof of the programme's production base at 35c Marylebone High Street, London W1, which is also the home of BBC London 94.9, but Peter Cockcroft is also regularly seen from some of the events or outside broadcasts on the programme, a practice common in regional programming.

An update to the programme's set on 1 March 2004 saw the addition of a desk and the slight alteration of the programme titles to read 'BBC London' rather than 'BBC LDN'. Until this time, BBC London News was the only one out of all the other regional news programmes to not have a desk within the studio. The presentational style now included a bar-like counter for interviews with guests in the studio, with both presenters and guests shown seated though the camera angles used meant presenters were normally shown full body, while guests seated on the other side of the counter were the traditional "talking heads". The original style of set has since been copied by other national and regional programmes including Reporting Scotland.

The new programme titles developed by Red Bee Media are dynamic and allow for the inclusion of any video material.

BBC London refreshed its brand identity completely on 12 December 2005, with a new title sequence designed by Red Bee Media and theme music composed by David Lowe. The titles now involve a series of videos showing different parts of London life, separated by a white translucent band which crosses the screen until the BBC London logo appears. The title shots change every single night to reflect landmarks and activities that symbolise home for a potential audience of more than 11 million people - bigger than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.

Comparisons are inevitably made to the commercial TV regional competition, in this case ITV1's London Tonight, which is produced for ITV by ITN. The title sequence of the latter programme also incorporates shots of London; it has to be said the landmarks in the ITV titles are perhaps rather more familiar than the somewhat vague visual representations of London life chosen for the BBC programme. However, criticism of the rebranding was very limited.

A further update to the studio on 26 March 2007 saw the introduction of a small red table in the centre, with "LONDON" printed on the front, and the screen moved to the other side of the studio. The most noticeable change, however, was the fact that the presenter was now given a chair on which to sit rather than stand for the duration of the program.

The TV channel can be watched in any part of the UK (and Europe) on digital satellite channel 974 on the BBC UK regional TV on satellite service.

Main article: BBC London 94.9

BBC London Radio combines speech and music based programmes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. [1] The station has a diverse range of presenters that host varied shows from sometimes controversial phone-ins - Vanessa Feltz to Norman Jay's Giant 45 show including old and new soul funk and house music, although Jay is known for not conforming to one particular style of black music.

A dedicated travel news service is operated by BBC London on all three mediums using information supplied by Transport for London, National Rail and the Highways Agency. Updates within the Breakfast programme on BBC One are shown at 06:28, 06:58, 07:28, 07:58, 08:28 and 08:58, Mondays to Fridays.

The travel news on radio is updated at 31 and 59 minutes past each hour during off peak times, and every 15 minutes, (starting at the top of the hour), during evening and morning peaks. BBC London 94.9 is one of the few radio stations to have access to TfL cameras.

The travel news online is updated from an independent travel information supplier. This data is fed from their main system onto BBC London's website, via the BBC Travel News portal. The online section also has features on various aspects of travel in London.

The current regular BBC London travel presenters are Jules Lang, Steve Phillips, Billy Reeves and Adela Meer.

BBC Portal

• London Tonight
• List of BBC London Presenters and Reporters

• BBC - London - London Homepage. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
• BBC - London - News - Latest News. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
• The TV Room Plus - TV Titles. Retrieved on April 3, 2007.