The BBC 6 O'Clock Regional Bias Report

A perennial complaint by non-Londoners is that the BBC News was relentless 'metrocentric' and gave much greater time to events that happened within the capital.
As a Londoner I've always felt that this claim was utter bollocks but sometimes it's important to check out your assumptions.
I decided to track the weekday News at 6 broadcast on BBC 1 and break down it's coverage by nation and English region. The first run was interesting but exposed flaws in my methodology so I decided to restart the project in September. Each weekday I log the news and break it down into; International, National, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and then the English Regions. Where a story has two or three different foci I divided up the time equally.

I then strip out the National and the International stories (about 65% of all the news stories) and calculate my percentages based on the stories that have a regional foci.
Please note: that this is done entirely to satisfy myself and my methodology would not stand much scrutiny from a social scientist. However I believe results should be interesting.
1 Month In 
      Pop        %  Tot-Mins North West 7.052 11%        42.66 South-East 8.635 14%        24.07 Yorkshire 5.284 8%        19.76 London 8.174 13%        18.31 Wales 3.064 5%        14.55 Scotland 5.254 8%        13.59 Northern Ireland 1.811 3%          7.37 North East 2.597 4%          6.55 South-West 5.289 8%          5.60 East 5.847 9%          3.43 East Midlands 4.533 7%          1.97 West Midlands 5.602 9%          0.92
Pop: population in millions.%: percentage of UK population.Tot-mins: coverage in minutes so far.
A fairer way of looking at this data is to see how many minutes of coverage there is per million population.

Pop Min/Mpop North West 7.052          6.05 Wales 3.064          4.75 Northern Ireland 1.811          4.07 Yorkshire 5.284          3.74 South-East 8.635          2.79 Scotland 5.254          2.59 North East 2.597          2.52 London 8.174          2.24 South-West 5.289          1.06 East 5.847          0.59 East Midlands 4.533          0.43 West Midlands 5.602          0.16
Now in the first instance this looks like my position is totally vindicated, far from dominating the news London is strictly mid-list, the North-West is dominant and the Midlands sadly neglected but...
My experience from my last run at this is that there be a large variation from week to week and month to month. The North-West got a lot of coverage due to the shooting of two police at the start of the month, Northern Ireland because of the rioting in Belfast, Wales and Yorkshire because of the floods. I believe that I will need at least six months worth of data before I can be confident of the results.
UPDATE 1/10./2012



Pop km2 m/kkm2 London 8.174        1,572 11.65 North West 7.052      23,837 1.79 Yorkshire 5.284      15,420 1.28 South-East 8.635      19,096 1.26 North East 2.597 8,592 0.76 Wales 3.064 20,779 0.70 Northern Ireland 1.811 13,843 0.53 South-West 5.289      23,837 0.23 East 5.847      19,120 0.18 Scotland 5.254 78,387 0.17 East Midlands 4.533      15,627 0.13 West Midlands 5.602      12,998 0.07
Somebody suggested I rank by minutes per 1,000 square km. London of course dominates but then it is the only fully urban English region. Interestingly the North West continues to outperform the rest and the Midlands are still at the bottom.