BBC News Channel & World News - merger speculation

I doubt though they'll touch the non-English language news services. Not sure where the funding comes for those nowadays - it was the Foreign Office but then the licence fee payer was forced to pay for it but I think the foreign office were throwing more money back at it now.

Not sure where I stand on a potential BBC News/World merger - certainly don't agree with the circumstances which are forcing it to be considered and just like BBC3 we've seen the News Channel deliberately run down in preparation for such a merge so they can claim it's actually only a few hours a day affected.

I do think though ultimately the BBC in the UK and the BBC outside of the UK has to serve two quite different audiences and definately feel the licence fee payer will be getting short changed by any merger. They could certainly work together more in sharing reports and programming, and that would probably lead to BBC News becoming more of an "appointment to view" service than rolling news, but I do think the ability to break away from each other is quite important. Ultimately for it to work I think the BBC would need to treat it as closing both services and starting afresh rather than merging the two.

Which i cannot see happening-There is no way a merger will work anyway and that hopefully this is just a newspaper rumor that comes round at least once a year-as already said The News Channel is (as of now) not closing.

BBC News is another news outlet thats joining the snapchat craze. BBC World twitter has changed their logo to a 'snap code' and the username is 'bbcnews' but seems to be world based stories. https://twitter.com/BBCWorld

I see that there is some sort of transition now of a slight merge of social media, the FB pages merged about a year ago and I think it won't be long until the twitter pages will be merged into one also.

Furthermore there isn't that much of the BBC News Channel left to merge is there. Monday-Friday only 10 1/2 hours is neither pre-recorded nor simulcast - and 9 1/2 if you include the BBC Two Newshour. At least another 1 1/2 hours is The Papers or Sports News. So when you take that out they only produce 8 hours of independent rolling news a day, pretty poor when compared to when it started out.

But on the other hand that is the time that would end up being replaced by BBC World News and BBC World News isn't really a rolling news channel. It's more of a series of independent bulletins and programmes. The two channels also have different audiences - BBC World News's audience aren't going to be happy if the schedule gets flooded with UK news, politics etc. and similarly BBC News's audience wouldn't be happy if major UK news was being supplanted by major international news - the UK floods would be down the running order for instance. The overnight solution only works because few UK viewers are watching and the UK news can be pocketed into the breaks, you couldn't do that all day. One of BBC World News's advantages is that unlike US-based international news channels it isn't that centric to its nation of origin - that shouldn't be thrown away.

Sure there are cuts to be made in the News Department - why can't the News at Six presenter also do the News at Eight and why are there about a thousand Sports presenters, for instance. But merging the News Channel and World News is definitely a bad idea with relatively little saving in it.

Fairly sure that presenters are quite a small part of the cost of running the two operations.

A major complaint of CNN International that I've seen is that it's too US-centric. The BBC is more international despite UK Reporters and that single half-hour on weekdays. Based on the CNNI simulcasts on CNN/US, I'm sure a non-American viewer doesn't really need to know about some arrest in some US city that probably wouldn't be significant on a national level in the first place. CNNI comes off as arrogant and self-centred based on what I've seen and other people's complaints. Since BBC World News is a commercial operation, wouldn't being more UK-centric push more viewers away to for example Al Jazeera where one of their anchors said in a promo they were 'properly international'.

I get the feeling many of the international reports are already shared because many have a slight slant towards the UK but I could be wrong since the UK is a world power. And when the two news channels aren't simulcasting, many of the science, arts, and other stories on World are about or relates to Britain in some way or another.

Is that not what I said? I was saying that BBC World News isn't heavily slanted towards the UK, in the way that RT, CNN etc. are towards their own nations. The BBC's internationally balanced coverage is one of the reasons WNA goes down well with critics in the domestic US market.

I was planning to mention CNN specifically in that comment and having a second look at that it does look bad. Sorry about that, didn't mean give you the sense I ignored you.

Curious is there much difference between a presenters salary if they appear on World vs Domestic?

Suspect the differential is more to do with when they were signed (ignoring BBC One presenters who also present on the News Channel). I would expect the 'star' presenters on BBC World News (who present the flagship strands) to possibly be contracted at a higher level of pay than some of the jobbing World News and News Channel lots?

However - to be honest - I think relatively few people will know the actual figures involved so this is all speculation. Carrie Gracie once, possibly misguidedly, announced her salary when she was a regular News Channel presenter,during an interview when challenged by her interviewee. (£92,000/year in 2009 http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/may/12/bbc-news-presenter-carrie-gracie-reveals-salary )

As others have said though, presentation costs are likely to be on the margins. They are a cost that can be reduced - as the News Channel has by reducing the number of strands that are double-headed - but they are not the bulk of costs.

Thanks. I was wondering if it was akin to the US type of broadcasting where the higher the audience figures the better the pay. I imagine it would be fair to say that a BBC presenter say for the Channel Islands opt out would make significantly less than a presenter for London?

I only ask because two BBC presenters (Katty Kay and Jon Sopel) have tweeted or mentioned that they live in Georgetown in Washington, DC. Homes in Georgetown are most cost at least a million dollars and I imagine leasing a home is expensive and there is no way a person could afford to live there if they were making $100,000. I know it's none of my business but this is what I based my question about pay being higher for World presenters.

That wasn't your original question though. You asked specifically about News channel vs World News.

You weren't asking about regional presentation - where things are often different. There were a number of 'big name, big money' signings to BBC regional TV in the 90s and 00s (Leeds, Tunbridge Wells), but a number of these contracts have not been renewed, often - it is suggested - to cut costs.

You would not be surprised if the BBC One Ten O'Clock News presenter earned more than the Look East Breakfast presenter... But some regions use regional reporters (who may well be staff) as presenters and may well pay them 'acting up' pay to do so, when they do so.