BBC News at 10 to be shorter

"This afternoon, the BBC will announce a change in scheduling – introducing a new slot, at 10.35pm from Monday-Wednesday. It will be devoted to showcasing the best of BBC Three programming on BBC One. Question Time will also start slightly earlier, at 10.35pm on Thursdays.

To help introduce this, from Monday 4 March, the national and local News and weather will reduce in length from 45 minutes to 35 minutes – mirroring what we do now on a Friday. I will be discussing how the duration of the programming will work in practice with our TV Editors this week, and we will also explore pilots to see what approach might work best for us."

It’s very unlikely BBC One would put the news at 9pm, it would prove too detrimental to their current 9pm shows and News at 10 is well established that such a move would end up hurting the news as well since ITV would have the advantage at both 9pm and 10pm

I love the way they talk as if nobody has any memory of how it used to be.

Unless this quote is a scene from W1A

So for clarification here is the new BBC One news minutage :

Network news - 26.5 minutes
Nations and regions news and weather - 7 minutes
UK weather (England viewers only) - 1.5 minutes

How does this compare to what ITV do? I presume ITV NaT finishes before 10:30pm.

Not usually - it can run longer than the BBC News as the regional news is shorter but still in a 15 minute slot. Usually there are no, or few, ads within News at Ten and only a promo or two between the weather and regional news.


The good news though is we can pencil in 4th March as the day Brexit finally gets sorted one way or another and the BBC requires an extended late bulletin to cover it.

I expect there is hidden cost cutting here

One or two fewer reports on the national news
Shorter regional, no need for any late OBs and the crews required for such thing
Maybe even a smaller crew in the gallery if it’s a less complex bulletin
Shorter regional weather, could be pre recorded rather than live

I’m not sure what the exact minutage is on ITV but of course they have ad breaks scattered about anyway so a half hour bulletin wouldn’t have half an hour of content even if it ran full length.

Just like now then

There was extra money for the longer regional late bulletins and mostly this was spent on reporting staff, camera staff for lives and support in the galleries.

NAT is usually a full 30 minutes. The regional news is 11 minutes in length

The majority of extra effort for the extended regional late bulletins was actually achieved by moving resources away from the lunchtime bulletins, which already had a very small audience.

The management idea was that exciting new material could be created for the late bulletins with frequent live hits.

In reality very little local news happens after 7pm so most of the output has just been re-runs from the 6.30 programme. When live hits are used they have often just been a reporter standing outside a dark building talking about a story that had been originally covered by another reporter earlier in the day.

The fact that the Friday late news (both national and local) has always been shorter with little, or no, complaint from the public has emboldened the bosses to extend the pattern through the week.

The question is whether staff will be reallocated to lunchtime bulletins, or the opportunity taken to make staff savings with the huge budget cuts in sight needed to fund the over 75s licence shortfall.

Wish they'd just be honest about it being a cost saving exercise. The timing really couldn't be worse - even if they left it another month until after Brexit should be done and dusted, perhaps even winning favour with the Brexiteers by saying how they'll be so little bad news to report once we leave the EU they'll struggle to fill the bulletins.

Also can't help but feel there was a middle ground here they were ignoring - 10.40pm! Wales has generally put it's junction at 10.40pm and I think that gives the psycholigical impression of programmes not starting towards the end of the hour and could be achieved with half of the proposed cuts to the national and regional news.

What I hope is that ITV don't follow suit - they were all for slashing their late regional bulletins to 4-6 minutes at one point but the BBC extending theirs meant they at least got a 15 minute slot in the schedules, even if in reality they only aired for half that time.

That's how the extended bulletins started in 2015. Extra time was given to cover the election and then it stayed like that.