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 Choice issues discussed. "Crimewatch Extra" provided follow-up detail on the cases involved in the main programme, and "Row Z" was a football discussion forum that aired after "Match of the Day" finished on BBC One. The 'Hotlink' format has since been adopted by many other channels, particularly both ITV2 and E4. The channel was presented as an alternative to the normal BBC One and BBC Two schedules. This was reflected in its original on-screen presentation which featured groups of threes. For the first year of BBC Choice, children's programming would air on weekend afternoons as CBBC Choice, and included strands like