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 Stoke most of the area except in some parts of the Staffordshire Moorlands (Cheadle in particular) and Stafford (which has its own relays). The Stoke digital multiplex has half the number of stations compared to other areas (BBC Radio Stoke, Signal 1, Signal 2 and Kiss). UTV Media own 70% of the multiplex. The station can also be heard on the Internet via streaming audio. The majority of the station's programming is produced and broadcast from Stoke. On weekday nights and weekend evenings, BBC Radio Stoke also carries some regional programming for the Midlands, produced from sister stations BBC WM and