BBC Journalists strike 18/02/2013

With regards to Cameron's India Visit, the only one that show's up is India Business Report's Yogita Limaye...

The May (?) 2005 one was far worse. Technical staff were out as well so it was all very dodgy - I remember headline sequences and reports falling to black and somehow they managed to playout some Breakfast titles that had been dropped 3 years earlier. I think BBC2 even went to Ceefax instead of a planned News 24 simulcast as the service was so flimsy.

That said, an unusual decision to go to normal daytime programming, but probably a wise one if you're going to end up with the likes of Click filling the back half-hours - kind of invites people to switch over to Daybreak. On another note I do think if you're doing one bulletin for everyone it's far better to do "BBC News" rather than the old system of Breakfast, 1, 6, 10 etc - which must look very odd indeed to global viewers, and domestic viewers, particularly outside of breakfast time, probably won't even notice the lack of time-branding.

It's interesting how strikes were fairly common until the late 90s, then nothing notable for ages until that 2005 one, and they have happened every so often since then. Kind of shows the difficult position the Beeb is has been in lately...

A side effect of the dropping of Breakfast is of course the loss of all regional opts this morning, regardless of whether there were enough staff to produce them. The first regional slot today should therefore be the lunchtime news at 1:30, which is still currently billed as a full length bulletin at the usual time. You may well see some unfamiliar faces presenting, or even dual-region bulletins (of course the sub opts generally don't do lunchtime anyway, but it's conceivable that Hull and Leeds might join forces).

I think they made the wrong decision about Breakfast this morning. By placing back-half hour programmes they were virtually asking viewers to switch to Daybreak. They should have just had Gavin repeat the bulletin for the next half-hour as well. Or, they could have had Gavin in a separate studio (B?) with Breakfast for One and NC and then have Sally Bundock do the main news as well for World (or Adnan Nawaz who only did one hour).

The point is, the handling of today has been wrong!

BBC WN has repeated The Bottom Line again for the Nth time.

I've just check BBC World News schedule, and still not updated.

The BBC Press Office says the News at 1 will be running 30 minutes today, including regional news and weather. No regional news at 1:30-1:45pm.

EDIT: The scheduled regional news at 1:30pm will be replaced by Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers.

It was planned earlier to have Breakfast running from 7-9.15 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/industrial-action-nuj.html), but it looks like that plan was dropped as presumably they felt they didn't have enough material.

BBC One 10:58am news summary replaced by a weather update, with a lady called Alina Jenkins.

BBC Two is still simulcasting the News Channel at 11am as usual. As noted above, an edition of Coast will be shown instead of World News at 11:30am.

I wonder, will the NUJ strike only affect BBC English services (WN, NC, Radio)? How about BBC Arabic and Persian services?

So can we expect Peter Dobbie at any point today? As he was the stalwart of the last strike, doing god knows how many hours...

Is Lucy Hockings isn't a part of any Industry union? She is doing a live point on London Fashion Week right now...
I still wish there's going to be Impact , but that may be highly unlikely.

I expect to see more of Gavin Grey later today, three 30 min bulletins seems too little for him on strike day.