BBC News at 10 to be shorter

The beginning of March seems an odd time to reduce its length - 3 weeks later, probably, there's a massive historic event happening, and there's likely to be a lot of repercussions for weeks, months after. Seems a bit of an odd time to be shortening main news bulletins even if they are a bit of an oddity in the schedule

I think they should keep the BBC News at Ten the same time and just ditch regional news. It already gets half an hour at 6.30 which is too much.

I've not seen any mention of giving the time back to the Regions at 13:30. It was taken away from the Lunch News when the Ten News was extended in 2015.

Only briefly. It’s now back to its original length.

Perhaps if the TOTH was cut right out and went to titles then presenter that would add at least several minutes to the programme. About time they got rid of the stupid jungle drums, they're outdated and pointless.

I'll have you know the thunderclaps are a staple part of BBC News(!)

They weren't on News 24 for many years.

Random observations, with apologies...

Does BBC One still need to show thirty minutes of news? Considering almost 99% of the UK will have access to the BBC News Channel on some digital platform, BBC One could concentrate on building up its audiences that may not necessarily want news.

Also, what is the point of BBC One showing a ten- or fifteen-minute bulletin at, say, 5.20pm and 10.10pm on Saturdays and Sundays and for the BBC News Channel to temporarily shove its duty presenter out the way, e.g. Annita McVeigh or Lukwesa Burak, for an overpaid presenter to come in just for BBC One viewers, e.g. Kate Silverton or Fiona Bruce. Again, why not ditch the bulletins altogether.

And finally, should BBC Breakfast be reformatted into a serious news programme from 7 til 9, and brought back to London. It was a PR stunt to ship everything oop north to Manchester (sorry, Salford) by the out-of-touch pygmies that the late Alan Towers so gloriously referred to in his on-screen resignation.

(Quickly runs for cover)

The (!) was hinting at sarcasm.

Because BBC1 and 2 like ITV, C4 and 5 are full service PSB channels with a range of programming including news. Yes the audience can watch a 24 hour news channel but they don't. Look at the ratings


There is still the need for a crafted curated half hour news that sums up the news and isn't just a sausage factory of rolling news.

It's the same situation in the US where 24 hour news is a lot more established. The networks have news bulletins in prime time despite having their own channels for it



This had been discussed many times before

It wasn't just PR, not having everything come from London is a good thing, it adds plurality and different voices into the output. The old days when all Vox pops came from Shepherds Bush Market are long gone thankfully.

Breakfast is just fine, it gets good figures and certainly doesn't need to be made serious. They tried that in the 80s

There's probably no room for it in London, BH is rammed as it is. Part of the reason for relocating stuff to Salford was because there is more and cheaper space there.

I know it's a TVF bugbear but I'd echo what others have said - in the era of DQF I'm surprised bringing in a newsreader at weekends specially to read the BBC1 news bulletins has still continued especially with many of those presenters like Clive Myrie or Ben Brown being regular News Channel presenters.

Yes there's arguments about rehearsal time being needed and that the BBC1 newsreader writes their own headlines/prepares questions to discuss with correspondents but there's still plenty of 'breaks' during the news channel evenings on weekends with the World simulcast between 9-10pm and filler programmes on the half hour to allow time to prepare. And often most of the questions asked on the BBC1 bulletins are essentially variations on 'Tell us more' and hardly the sort of thing that needs hour upon hour of preparation - the News Channel presenters cope perfectly fine asking questions to correspondents.

It just feels an unnecessary luxury - most BBC One viewers won't particularly care who's reading the news at weekends as long as they're competent enough.

I think 30 minute lunchtime, evening, and bedtime bulletins on BBC 1/ITV will be around far longer than rolling news channels, the latter are rapidly morphing into 'docu-features' channels anyway....

Might be different when linear TV becomes a minority platform.