BBC News 24

As you can see in the other threads Adrian is joining CNN

News 24 well ahead of Sky with the latest hostage video from Iraq (in fact Sky still haven't shown it, a good 10 minutes after News 24 first aired it). Also have the security correspondent in the studio, and a friend of the hostage on the phone.

Sky News broke the story about a minute before News 24 but have not shown the video, prefering to talk about sport, have an ad brea, do the headlines & weather, and now gone into the nuclear story.

Why are Sky so slow on this one?

Personnaly, I think Sky News has 'gone down hill' since its relaunch

They may not have had access to the video. The BBC has access to Al-Jazeera - and indeed BBC Monitoring records it 24 hours a day - perhaps Sky had to wait for the pictures to be fed by the agencies or shown again. Or they just missed it totally.

Has Maxine done another disappearing act from her current shift? I don't have much of a chance to watch N24 just now, so could someone fill me in on what's been happening presenter-wise. Have the usual presenters been on (9-1 Kate and Simon and so on) or have there been any absences etc.

This is the third week that neither Matthew nor Maxine have been on; there have been various people on in their place, Julian Worricker, Tim Willcox, Tony Campion, Rachel Schofield, Liz Pike...

Kate and Simon are both usually on but usually they are both off for at least one day if they've been covering Breakfast. Jon & Louise, Chris & Jane & Peter Dobbie have all been on as usual, although Tim Willcox filled in for Chris Eakin on Monday and Thursday of last week.

Matthew's wife had a baby a couple of weeks back, so that could explain his absence.

Just saw a News 24 breakdown caption a few moments ago - after an ad for Life in the Undergrowth before the TOTH, the end BBC ONE red caption stayed on screen for several seconds, before being replaced with the breakdown caption for a few more seconds, then a 58-second countdown.

Luckily my spider-sense was tingling and I managed to capture it just as it transitioned between the BBC ONE ad and the breakdown caption

One mo, uploading to imageshack...

EDIT: Here you go...

Also someone forgot to reset the headline sequence with the generic titles, the 01.00 goes out on N24 and World, but had the N24 titles by mistake.

They've let Alistair Yates take a 2 week holiday. How very inconsiderate of them. On the up side, Deborah McKenzie has reappeared on the overnight shifts.

Last Sunday, Big Al's usual replacement, Stephen Cole was on. This week it's Liz Pike (the first time I've seen her presenting solo).

Now we know that Stephen Cole is off to Al-Jazeera, I think this means that he has already put in his final appearance on News24.

To quote a famous childs song "Cross your finger's and toes and who knows"

You don't mean... LIZ PIKE?

(Could you hear that? She can say it louder.)