History Newsroom South East BBC London News page 1 BBC London News page 2 South East Today South Today  
 
This look was introduced on 9th October 1997. It was presumably designed to coincide with the launch of the new BBC logo - but arrived a few days late. Presenters are Gwenan Edwards and Mike Embley. Here we also see one of the three original BBC1 South East balloon idents, rising up that well-known South East landmark, Mount Snowdon. Watch the opening titles    
Ambitious plans were announced in August 1999 to split up the South East region - more of this later - but nonetheless, Newsroom South East received a new look on 4th October (above), the first English region to convert to the generic BBC News look. Heather Lima was the presenter on this lunchtime bulletin.   
Almost exactly a year later, on 2nd October 2000, Newsroom South East went widescreen, along with the rest of the BBC's news output. But in common with other regional centres, Elstree was not equipped with widescreen cameras, and so had to put up with this 14:9 bodge. This caused a considerable degradation in picture quality, and looked particularly bad on digital terrestrial. BBC South East now had just one ident, now played out by Elstree on old-fashioned tape. The presenter here is Tim Donovan. 
Two weeks later, and the first part of the South East Review was put into effect as the Oxfordshire area was detached from the region and joined onto the South region, albeit with its own sub opt-out. More details here. South Today provided new opening titles to include their new acquistion; but did Newsroom South East bother to update theirs? Nope.  
A revolution occured on 6th August 2001; the second and main part of the South East Review was being delayed and delayed, but at last Newsroom South East was able to move out of the outdated Elstree centre and into a new high-tech digitally equipped studio in Marylebone High Street in west London. This meant BBC South East became the first English region to have full widescreen capability. Now the entire show, and surrounding presentation, titles etc could be seen in 16:9 on digital terrestrial, with a vast improvement in picture quality and much cleaner-looking graphics. The backdrop behind the presenter was now achieved by the CSO (blue screen) technique. Still only one ident variation, though. Stills from the opening title sequence:      
Watch the opening titles in widescreen    
Regular NSE faces: Mike Embley (top left), Gillian Joseph (top right), Jules Botfield (bottom left) and Charley Figgis (bottom right). In the preceding summer, the show had been reduced from being a double header to having a single presenter. One of the longest serving South East presenters, Rob Curling, had already gone, and so had Gwenan Edwards, for the bright lights of News 24 and UK Today, so it was now either Mike, Gillian or Tim Donovan presenting on any one evening. Mike's last show was on 17th August.  
The sting played at the halfway point (left); and Mike signing off for another evening (right).  
Left: unlike other regions, the South East never had a dedicated weather presenter. Instead, the weather came from whichever national presenter was on duty; in this case Michael Fish does the honours. Right: Since 2000, the breakfast travel service has made use of Scotland Yard's traffic cameras across the London area, brought to us by a dedicated travel presenter. Then some bright spark came up with the idea of designing a pointless mock web page graphic to stick round them...
Newsroom South East jettisoned another part of its region at the start of September 2001, as the next part of the South East Review was put into action, around a year later than originally intended. This time it was Kent's turn, as it was joined with East Sussex from the South Today region to form a brand new South East region with its own news programme, South East Today. This meant the old stager found itself broadcasting to what was effectively the new BBC London region. With a considerably reduced broadcast area, did NSE bother to update their titles this time? Nope. This is because 1st October 2001 saw the launch of its successor - BBC London News... History Newsroom South East BBC London News page 1 BBC London News page 2 South East Today South Today | 
