BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

Nice to see Huw doing the rest of the days news on the Six from the studio.

He presented the whole of the Six tonight as well.

Julian Worricker just introduced tonight's Meet the Author as being "the final edition" of the programme. Not that it's a bad thing that it's not being broadcast because the whole programme is completely useless, but why is this the final edition? James Naughtie moving on, or they just cancelling it completely?

EDIT: James also exited the programme with "As this is the last one for a while, thank you for watching" (or words to that effect), so either this is a temporary hiatus of the programme, or it's a permanent one with no ETA for returning. I feel it was a long time coming, they should really bring back Hardtalk in that 8.30pm slot, instead of relegating it to 12.30am or online.

How does this affect Radio 4 and the Today programme. I thought they broadcast Meet the Author on Saturdays.

Hardtalk should stay at 12:30am at the earliest (although it could replace the travel show at weekends). The 20:00 hour is the only full (or almost full in the case of Thursdays) evening hour of news broadcast solely on the news channel and should remain a full hour of news.

However, I personally wouldn't mind it replacing one of the editions of Outside Source...

Given how sparse Hardtalk recordings are nowadays (with the 12.30am broadcast often airing the previous days' interview, or even just rebroadcasting older interviews), I wouldn't be adverse to a few repeats over the weekend if needed.

This is especially so, given the weekend largely just consists of the Travel Show, Click and Dateline London repeats, with the occasional random 30 min VT of something else if it happens to exist. Hardtalk's a decent debate programme and it should have more airtime imo, and I preferred it's 8.30pm airtime slot.

The Friday hour is also not a full broadcast either, it has a repeat of the Film Review at 8.45pm, although there is no Beyond 100 Days on that day, so a Hardtalk broadcast then would probably be just fine without disrupting anything.

Given that a weekday evening presenter barely presents over the 5 hour window they're covering (due to simulcasts and pre-recorded stuff), they might as well just simulcast more things so they don't need to have too much presenting cover for evening shifts and, if needed, just ask the News at Ten presenter to cover any additional broadcasts on the News Channel.

I agree. The vast majority of Hardtalk broadcasts are in graveyard slots, between midnight and 5am. They could easily have a few showings at other times, which would probably improve the ratings.

I even remember the days when, just before the 4pm TOTH bulletin on the News Channel, there was an ad FOR the evening's hardtalk broadcast at 8.30pm. That would have helped viewers watch the programme at that time, but since it's only broadcast overnight (you might as well just call it an online-only programme at this point), I guess very few watch it (which would explain the non-stop repeat of old interviews, heck at times the Donald Trump interview by Tim Sebastian has been repeated)

HardTalk airs daily on World News too - do they also cycle through repeats or is there actually a new edition every day?

the VD programme finished up with a few interviews on the roof of BH - which was a nice idea, but unfortunately it was incredibly out of focus and overexposed. I really hope it was a technical problem rather than a camera operator who thought that was acceptable quality.

Looks like we may be in a simulcast from Westminster for the 1100 hour. They're on a rooftop, but I don't think it's the regular one on 4 Millbank - rather one overlooking Parliament Square.

Utterly abysmal technical quality from Anita McVey’s (sp) interviewee camera, completely unracked, unmatched with the others, and out of focus. A disgrace