BBC Ulster

So part of the BBC’s remit is to provide local programming in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Never has a corporate strategy been so well suited for its audience. Northern Ireland people love their towns, their sports teams, their gardens, their history, their veterans, just everything contained in the six counties of Northern Ireland.

There’s a show called Your Place and Mine every week where host Anne Marie McAleese lets us know which towns are having festivals celebrating pedigree sheep/antique boats/tractor races/Comber potatoes/etc. This week: "the return of the Portrush Flyer steam train, the architects who have been shaping Belfast for the past 110 years, and Celtic celebrations in Navan.” And then there’s The Town I Love So Well: "Today Owen's in Fermanagh to meet one of Northern Ireland's best loved actors, Charlie Lawson, most well known for playing Jim McDonald in Coronation Street. Charlie takes Owen on a boat tour of Lower Lough Erne as he tells tales of a childhood spent at Devenish, shares his passion for riding horses and visits his grandparents' grave for the first time in Rossorry.” And Colum Arbuckle interviews seniors each week during "Time of Our Lives” and we learn about their travels and adventures and hobbies and brushes with fame.
The shows above are weekly. The daily shows feature no end of call ins from people seeking dedications for their loved ones or a particular song they want to hear while they’re working. Northern Ireland is like one big small town. I love people’s enthusiasm for their hobbies, their history, and their hometowns. So many Americans live in faceless suburbs. And we’re a bit too mobile to form these deep commitments to place. Even though my history in Ulster is limited to six years in the 1970s, there’s no doubt I fell in love with the people and places of Ulster. I recently read a book by a guy who hiked from one end of the border (Carlingford Lough) to the other (Derry), sharing stories about what makes the people and the lands along the border unique. I totally get why he would do that.
Of course, people in Great Britain have the same love of their land. There’s a show called Countryfile which started in 1988 and is probably one of the BBC’s most popular shows. It focuses on farming, rural issues and "celebrates the beauty and diversity of the British countryside.”
I’m put in mind of an American hiker in Finland talking to a Fin. The Fin couldn’t understand why Americans would blow the top off a mountain to get at the coal (a specialty in West Virginia). He said Finnish people love their land so much that a company would never get away with such desecration. I think the British are similar, a very good trait to have.
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