BBC News 24

The bright red 'BREAKING' ticker masthead has been in use for some time.

I really like Ben and think News 24 should consider him as a permanent presenter. If Simon McCoy was to be poached by Breakfast or move to a national bulletin, he'd be the perfect replacement and would work well with Kate - I'm just making an excuse for him to join!!

Shock horror, Maxine was actually on N24 today!!

Well as other have said he did used to do the slot all the time with Jackie Hardgrave

Ben presented that slot until November 2001 (don't ask how I remember that particular thing), after which he switched to being a Newsnight presenter and Phil Hayton moved across from BBC World.

Is it just me or is Matthew Amroliwala sounding a bit stuffy today?

Actually re: Ben stopping presenting in 2001, it was the day after the general elections. I remember because Philip Hayton did the reactions to the result with Joanna Gosling. I thought at the time, that he was just filling in, but to my surprise he was there 4 years later!

I thought Peter Dobbie & Joanna Gosling worked well together this evening. A few stumbles into each other's lines, but they laughed it off and carried on so it didn't seem awkward.

Yes, it made a nice change seeing Peter paired up with someone.

Who filled his shift from 23.00? Did he stay on to do it or did someone else come in for it?

And if he was on 0900-1300 that was almost his original slot!

Ben was one of News 24's launch presenters, originally presenting 0900-1200 with Jackie Hardgrave Mon-Thur, and with Anastasia Cooke (who previously reported for Here and Now) on Friday.

(The original strands were at different times - 0600-0900, 0900-1200, 1200-1600 and 1600-1900 ISTR. 0600-0900 had the same presenters across the 7 days of output, whilst the other strands were Mon-Fri, with a different team of presenters and different slots at weekends)

Can anyone provide a list of the presenters on News 24 from launch that have now left? (Like Jackie Hardgrave etc.)

There does seem to have been a change to the way this is used now though.

Whereas before the bright red was used with the story name, and part of the cycle of other ticker stories, it is now put up continuously for a period after the main breaking news strap has been taken down, with the word 'BREAKING', and all other ticker activity suspended.

Much better than before as you can now tell that they have broken the story and will no doubt come back to it. Before they put the strap up, broke the news, took it down, and if you tuned in just afterwards you didn't have a clue. It's also better than Sky News's method which is just to keep the strap up for ages.

Just hope they stick with it!

Jackie Hargrave
Sarah Montague
Brenda Paterson
Peter Coe
Valerie Sanderson (almost)
Gavin Esler
David Robertson
John Nicolson
Brian Hanrahan


(I do concede that some of the above are still with the BBC and appear on other outlets, however they are not anchors any longer on News 24......)