BBC News Presenter Count 1967-2020

Six O'clock News 2000:

(1) Huw Edwards - 173 programmes
(2) Fiona Bruce - 76 programmes
(3) Sian Williams - 3 programmes
(4) Nicholas Witchell - 1 programme

Certainly different to today! Interestingly, and of course going by the notion the original Radio Times listings were correct and actually happened, from January to August 2000 Huw and Fiona were the only presenters on the Six, apart from Nicholas Witchell's one off appearance on Thursday 1st June. Sian's first appearance this year was on Friday 8th September. It seems when Huw had a week off Fiona would present 5 days and vice versa.

Interesting that Nick Witchell presented the Six after the 1999 relaunch. Any chance of doing this for the Six in the 90s?

I will be doing the 90s eventually. I will be counting the Six up to 2009, then do the same for the Ten, and then start working on the 90s with Breakfast News first, followed by the Six and Nine.


Nick Witchell did weekend bulletins and the Nine too after 1999. I think he stopped altogether sometime in 2001.

This is good fun, although of course Breakfast had been running on Sundays (and Saturdays) since it began. 7th October was the first time it was billed in the Radio Times but it had been on BBC1 since 9/11, initially as a temporary measure but it never ended.

Similarly, although it was billed as Weekend 24 on Saturdays when it was on BBC2 in the early noughties, it was indeed Breakfast, as you can see here - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/2004-04-03#at-6.00. Presumably it was billed as that because it included another hour of News 24 aside from Breakfast although I can well imagine they just continued to bill it as Weekend 24 and nobody got round to changing it (much like how it's been mentioned here before how Daytime UK was axed in 1991 but the name kept being used internally for years after). In June 2004 they swapped BBC1 and BBC2 over on Saturday mornings as "an experiment" for the summer which presumably was the time someone noticed.

The Saturday breakfast slot started being simulcast on BBC2 in early 1998, I remember at the time there were numerous complaints nobody could see it apart from in the middle of the night, so they added that slot as a bit of a showcase. It only ran 8-9am for a while though, working around the Open University programmes.

Also worth pointing out that the overnight News 24 simulcast frequently ended around 7am on Sat/Sun in 2000 and 2001 meaning the first hour of the BBC News 24 version of Breakfast was normally on BBC1, even though it wasn't billed.

Six O'clock News 2001:

(1) Huw Edwards - 187 programmes
(2) Fiona Bruce - 47 programmes
(3) Sian Williams - 8 programmes
(4) Darren Jordon - 7 programmes

Six O'clock News 2002:

(1) Huw Edwards - 197 programmes
(2) Fiona Bruce - 50 programmes
(3) Darren Jordon - 2 programmes

OMG is that for real? It's almost hard to believe.

GREAT work. Can I send you some donuts or anything else (WITHIN LIMITS).

Lol do we have a web script running or something to count presenter appearances

I'm using Genome. It's not always 100% accurate due to holidays and last minute presenter changes, but is the only information I've got to conduct this exercise. When I get to 2009 I use BBC News Fix which is more robust and reliable.

My aim is to finish the Six up to 2009, then do the Ten from 2000-2009, then do the same for the 1990s. Any sarcasm or funny business and I will be finishing the count early, which will spoil it for those who are excited to see the presenter counts from the 1990s which are less documented on this forum.

World?

No unfortunately nothing for World or News 24/channel. Just Breakfast, Six & Nine/Ten.