Living in Greece | Why is BBC Local Radio Unavailable

BBC Live Local Radio Stations Streaming Update

If like me you listen to BBC local radio stations from Greece on the Internet, and therefore outside the UK, you'll currently be getting the boring announcement on your usual link that says that programming is not available for "contractual reasons" or "there is a temporary technical fault".

Now here is the rub. The BBC website has changed so much recently. It is difficult enough to navigate at the best of times. And now I can't listen to local UK news via my local BBC radio station. I am wondering why I cannot find any "notation" on the BBC local radio pages to mention why local radio can't be heard outside the UK at the moment.

One technique the BBC could use is to re-direct visitors to the BBC local radio pages who are outside the UK to a page that states that local radio streaming has been stopped during the Olympics. Instead after much searching to locate a satisfactory explanation, I find it is buried in a "help" link.

This awful state of affairs whereby Olympics programming interferes with routine listening is not because of 'contractual reasons' or a 'temporary technical fault' it is because the BBC is not efficient, flexible enough or capable to separate Olympic/Paralympic programming on a local station from regular programming output when it comes to live streaming. So the BBC managers block all output from BBC local radio to non UK listeners. That is called playing safe in case someone makes a technical mistake and feeds Olympic sports commentary when they should not. 

"Normal" live streaming will return a few days after the games on Friday 14 September" according to the BBC.

The page with the explanation is at:

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/playing_radio_progs/radio_paralympics

Details of how to listen to local (or national) radio stations is at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

The BBC's iPlayer is at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio

For BBC podcasts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts

of particular interest is Radio 4's Money Box at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moneybox

This looks like this is a case of the BBC putting its in-house priorities first (management of resources) ahead of the needs of the regular audience - in this instance those listeners outside the UK to BBC local radio stations.