Nationwide was a BBC current affairs television programme which ran from 9 September 1969 until 5 August 1983. Originally broadcast on BBC 1 from Tuesday to Thursday, and then each weekday from 1972, it followed the early evening news, and included the regional opt-out news programmes. Outline It followed a magazine format, combining regional news, political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting. It began on 9 September 1969, running between Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00pm, before being extended to five days a week in 1972. From 1976 until 1981, the start time was 5:55pm. The final edition was broadcast on 5 August 1983 and, the following October, it was replaced by Sixty Minutes. The long-running Watchdog programme began as a Nationwide feature. The light entertainment was quite similar in tone to That's Life!, with eccentric stories such as a skateboarding duck and men who claimed that they could walk on egg shells. Richard Stilgoe performed topical songs. The show's tendency to sidestep serious matters in favour of light pieces was parodied in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, where the show, instead of reporting on the opening of the Third World War, chose to feature a story about a "theory" that sitting down in a comfortable chair rests one's legs. After the introduction and round-up, the BBC regions opted out for their main news magazine programmes (Midlands Today, Points West, Wales Today, South Today, Look East, Reporting Scotland, Spotlight, Look North, Scene Around Six). Once they had handed back to Lime Grove Studios in London, the regions remained on standby to participate in feedback and two-way interviews to be transmitted across the whole BBC network. The programme's second, and best remembered theme tune, was a library piece called The Good Word, composed by Johnny Scott. The show was used in an influential cultural/media studies project at the University of Birmingham, known as The Nationwide Project. Nationwide for London and the South East For all of its run, Nationwide presented and provided the regional news for the BBC London/South East region, as this was the only BBC region not to have its own dedicated news team. A further peculiarity was that as this segment had no regional branding at all in London and the South East, it carried the Nationwide title despite only covering local news. This changed at the start of 1982, when the