BBC West Midlands schedule - and "Midlands Today" in 1964, one of the UK's first daily regional news programmes. Regional television had been established in 1957 with the launch of local evening news bulletins. Although it fared better than the struggling BBC North or BBC West (which was threatened for a while with being absorbed by the Midlands Region), it was clear that if BBC Midlands was too large to be truly local in the radio market, it was equally too small to be as self-sufficient across the full range of television programming as it had been in radio. The result was the
BBC Radio 2 with a 6:55am start up on Sundays. The station closed down at around 12:33am each day. However from Monday 29 September 1975 the closedown hours were scaled back even more, with BBC Radio 2 concluding their day at around 12:10am Mondays to Fridays, and at 12:33am on Saturdays and Sundays. There were exceptions to the rule, especially over Christmas and New Year periods when hours would be temporarily extended. Broadcasting hours would be extended to the 5am2am schedule on Saturday 1 April 1978. BBC Radio 2 became the first national 24-hour radio station in the UK in 1979. The station's