BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

The issue is clearly one of cost saving where a UK audience is getting an international broadcast where it would be inappropriate to interupt with news that may be of interest to the UK, or part of the UK,, but of absolutely no interest to the rest of the world. It's a shame the execs couldn't just be honest on Newswatch and say it wasn't covered due to the election coverage being an international simulcast rather than just avoiding the question.


I think it was the Sam Allardice story recent where they used pushbacks more than the newsreader to tell the story as they were simulcasting international programming at the time, so that could have been an option here, although really a break in programming every hour to cut to either national or regional news, with BBC World doing something else, should have been considered.

And that's the crux of it really.

The Beeb need to determine where their priorities are now, with a severe cash shortage (we all know why, we all agree it's outrageous, but we are where we are) they should retreat back to their core domestic commitments.

While the presidential election was significant, at least during the BBC One bulletins, the tram crash should have led if only for 5 mins of an extended bulletin, then the rest of the bulletin could have been dedicated to the pre-planned election coverage.

Viewers in London didn't get any meaningful coverage until noon, ironically on London Live, a channel who treats news as tick box programming. Can't fault BBC London News when they eventually got on-air before 2pm due to Trump with full coverage.

Easy to say but BBC World News is the commercial operation and presumably brings in revenue, so it's no real surprise the cuts have fallen more heavily on the licence fee funded UK channel.

I've said all along the problem with the cuts is that the BBC have tried to implement them in a way where they're trying to run the service as before, but with a significantly lower budget. I think for them to work they effectively need to rethink certainly the news channel, and probably World News as well, as if it were a completely new service with a much tighter budget to work too and effectively rebuild it from the ground up with todays budget in mind, rather than try to mould what they had before into a sustainable service.

Simulcasts are a key part of that and day to day it shouldn't be a case of filling the news channel with whatevers on World News at the time but aligning the schedules so that such simulcasts work for both. Part of that is the simulcasting of major events, but I think whilst in the past it was always effectively World News simulcasting the UK coverage it seems to have been done the other way this time, which ultimately had its flaws.

I can't see what would have been wrong with doing breakfast as normal with a ticker pointing people over to in depth coverage on the news channel whilst they covered the election in a smaller fashion.

In hindsight it's clear they should have gone their separate ways for Breakfast (as was scheduled), but had the tram crash not happened they'd have probably been criticised for such, so they can't win either way.

They had a major news story within the M25, 10 miles from their ( and Sky's ) chopper base, and a fully crewed national news studio, with a presentation, and production team twiddling their thumbs in Salford ! You don't need any hindsight for this one !

Sky and ITV must have fallen off their chairs, they ( apparently were no better ?) only had single channels at their disposal, which ALMOST lets them off the hook in my view

The wasted resource at Salford is shocking. There shouldbe better consideration of cancelling in advance or creating an opt in point for Breakfast to the simulcast. E.g. run Breakfast xx57 to xx10 & xx27 to xx35 covering local bulletin, news summary and weather and then the rest being simulcast. Presumably most regions were having to prepare bulletins in case they made it to air so couldn't spend that time on preparing packages for use layer in the day.

Surely that wouldn't have been any different to any other day?


Besides, with the skeleton crewing that the regions use at breakfast there's little prep going on for the day. Most of the newsroom won't turn up until after 9, the news editor a bit earlier.

Except on any other day they produce a bulletin and it makes it to air. These were bulletins that were prepared but in most cases never saw the light of day.

Some regions did the bulletin as usual and out it on Facebook. I have to say that would be more useful to me than the broadcast version - turning the TV on isn't part of my morning routine

Yes but that has no affect on prep for the rest of the days output as thats not what they'd be doing, whether the bulletin goes out or not.


Producing content that never sees the light of day is a fairly regular occurance in the world of news. It's a shame it happens but that's showbiz