Sad to hear that the great local-radio presenter Den Siegertsz is being axed from BBC Radio Stoke, as the station continues to dwindle away into what seems — in the very near future — to be very little actual ‘local hours’ of speech radio.

Surely the BBC should be boosting its local non-sports services and grassroots coverage, not slashing them to almost nothing? But it seems our local shows are soon to become a ‘shared’ regional hodge-podge, with BBC Stoke’s local shows merged together with those of Radio Hereford and Worcester, Radio Shropshire, and Radio Coventry & Warwickshire. Not very enticing for listeners who just want some good local speech-radio with local presenters and local topics. And I’m willing to bet there’ll be no ‘weekly digest’ podcast, featuring just the best Radio Stoke speech-radio local-interest bits all back-to-back. For some reason, the BBC have always resisted doing such an obvious thing.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Den turns ‘getting the boot’ into ‘boots on the ground’. Perhaps by starting a wonderful and wholly-independent free weekly podcast and YouTube channel, that gets him out-and-about in the city with a microphone. I’ll be subscribing, if he does.