BBC News: Presenters, correspondent & rotas

I remember back in the day, the weekend Duty newscaster at both BBC and ITN would do the lunchtime news at 1, early evening news in the 5 to 6 zone and the late evening news in the 9 to 11pm zone.

That’s a window of 10 plus hours on both a Saturday and a Sunday.

Considered as normal.

Until someone decided (in the BBC's case) in 1988 that the Duty Nine O Clock Newsnews reader (aka Martyn Lewis/Michael Burke and later Peter Sissons) would do the late at weekends.

When the BBC introduced at Saturday 0725 update, the Saturday 'daytime' shift was around 12 hours as it finished with the 1900-ish BBC2 bulletin. However given that one of the regulars on the shift was a newsreader rather than a journalist - the excellent Moria Stuart - maybe not a fair comparison to modern day newsrooms. Still a 12 hour-ish day

When the practice mentioned above of a separate late presenter at the weekend ended, the BBC went back to the same lunch/early and late evening presenter, on Saturdays at least. It is Darren Jordan I remember doing this. (Sundays were different IIRC as I'm sure Sunday lunchtimes were covered by Moira Stuart as part of The Politics Show)

On ITV the same presenter does the national 0825 or 0925 and lunch updates and then the London regional news on Sundays

With all the above, the bulletins involved are fairly short, but in the rolling news channel world, Sky News used to have mostly double headed 7 hour weekend shifts - 1000-1700 (1200 start on Sundays) and 1700-0000. Most of the shifts were 'continuous' rolling news as well:
1000-1130 was Saturday Live with one presenter 'leading' and the other doing news summaries
1130-1200 was Saturday Sport
then
1200-1700 was five hours co-presented rolling news
In the evening Live at Five had one presenter before a 2nd presenter joined until midnight, with a couple of half hour breaks for Sportsline

Ultimately I guess it comes down to how much 'off-air' work the presenter has to do, how the employer would prefer to organise the work, and contracts? I guess an individual may negotiate, and be paid accordingly, to work short or long shifts if that works best for them?

I'm surprised there isn't a BBC News at Nine on weekends, most of the time it's filled with repeats on BBC Two

She's said mid-September time she returns to her Friday-Sunday slot

Speaking of long presenter hours, the presenter who finished at 1am on the BBC News channel this morning is now back (imminently) at 6am on BBC World News, where he will remain on air for another six hours!

Stamina!

Isn't that what the announcers on Radio 4 do? Or at least they did at one point

I don't believe it is routine for the closing announcer to be the opening. I recall hearing the newsreader for the 6 being the following days opening announcer/newsreader but I don't know how often that happens now.

It might have been back when they had what is now the Langham Hotel opposite, they'd stay there overnight.

Or I might be getting it confused with the weather forecaster who does/did a nightshift including midnight and 5:30am forecasts

One of the weather shift used to end with the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. I think though now that the Shipping Forecast is the start of a shift now which makes me wonder if there are more prerecorded forecasts overnight.

The final weather forecast on Radio 4 is presented by the evening forecaster - e.g. yesterday evening Matt Taylor was doing the forecasts on the News Channel, but also did the PM weather forecast and the one after the Midnight News. My understanding is that the morning shipping forecast was the last thing the overnight forecaster does, but then I don't tend to catch the overnight forecasts so might be misinformed (this morning was Darren Bett, but then it was Stav Danaeos doing the weather forecasts)

Ben Bland and Samantha Simmonds deserve more than one shift a year on the News Channel just to cover everyone else's summer holidays.