BBC News nostalgia, including BBC World

It’s interesting you raise the BBC News Scotland point. There has also been a bit of a conscious or unconscious power struggle with the BBC Scotland brand.

The twitter account and handle are BBC Scotland News, but the profile pic (issued by the boys in London) is BBC News Scotland - in line with other accounts.



Most staff refer to it as BBC Scotland News, whereas Wales seem to tow the party line more. In both examples, staff come under the Nationals and Regions division, NOT news. So the internal brand loyalty lies more with the ‘Nations & Regions’.

In my opinion BBC News Scotland should fall into line but BBC Word News has exemption - for one reason, it’s a separate company - ‘BBC Global News Limited’.

BBC Wales is the same but when you consider their other Twitter handles it makes more sense as they're all uniform:

See also: the jumble of name combinations used by BBC local radio stations for their main / news / sport Twitter accounts!

I just wanted to echo the praise for James Reynolds - he is very good indeed and can switch from serious to light content seamlessly; he's also very natural when it comes to interviews and guests.

Ah interesting, I didn’t realise they were the same as Scotland.

Don’t know about Wales but back in the cow ident era it was “BBC Scotland on One” too.

That's right - I'd forgotten that the London/Washington broadcast wasn't a continuous thing. Just had a look back at my various recordings from 2003/2004 and it's a mixture of Mishal Husain or Adrian Finighan in London during the evenings. Mishal was still in Washington in February 2003 but had returned to London by December. My last recordings date from October 2004 and it's still the London-based evenings. After that I kind of started losing interest in BBC World as its presentation was changing for the worst - all that 'streaming' malarkey, dropping various stings, lack of closing on bulletins etc. and the inferior plasticky red and white set was the last straw! So, I can only assume the Washington/London newscast started up again some time between late 2004 and 2007 when World News America launched.

Yes, it used to syndicate BBC World News bulletins through Visnews, of which it was a partner.

I don't want to dig too far through the archives here but ...

Here's a post from August 2003 noting that Mishal had moved permanently back to London:

https://tvforum.uk/forums/post102381#post-102381

Here is a post from August 2004 ... the co-presentation had just started up again and then shut down for summer holidays.

I was 'kman340' in the quoted post. Katty Kay and Mike Embley Mon-Thurs; Tanya Beckett & Zeinab Badawi Fridays. Zeinab literally worked the first Friday, and then was off to bigger and better things. It was often Alistair Yates working with Tanya (he was also the main fill in for Mike Embley).

https://tvforum.uk/forums/post208252#post-208252

So... it was probably a little less than a year that the broadcast came from London with a solo anchor, before the co-presentation restarted. Mishal did it for the first few months, but eventually moved on. I recall quite a bit of Mike Embley, Zeinab Badawi, Lucy Hockings, and Anita McNaught in the interim.

Edit - Here's the archival post announcing the return of the Washington/London co-presentation. It started 6/28/04... so about a ten month gap without a broadcast coming from Washington. https://tvforum.uk/forums/post198224#post-198224

Fabulous work - I wonder why they stopped and started the Longon/Washington bulletins for a while? That thread doesn't seem to clarify that one way or the other. I guess the initial one launched in 2002 was a trial, maybe for a year, to see how things went?

The other thing that thread has reminded me is that Adrian Finighan moved to the TWT 0500 GMT/BST shift for a while before David Eades took it over. I also remember Nisha Pillai, David Jessel and Anita McNaught on that shift for a short while in 2003. That must have been a transition phase between Martine Dennis and David Eades. Martine moved to the later morning shift when Stephen Cole stopped presenting World News.

Oh my goodness, seeing all those names brings back super fond memories of living in France at this time. Would sit waiting for the 10 second countdown, breakfiller and those presenters, including Lyse of course. Fab memories!

Have to quote this schedule from one of those old threads/posts.



The simplicity of this schedule is quite wonderful and makes me wish things would be like that again, not just on World. I guess the current #coronavirus schedule is in a way a throwback to those simpler times.

It really was a great era for the channel, wasn't it? Beautiful, simple presentation and some of the best presenters they've ever had. I can't really think of one bad presenter from that time. I used to adore Lyse - she was often out in the field but when she did stints in London and would present World News, I was chuffed. Same goes for David Jessel who almost used to bark the news at you! And who can forget Nisha Pillai's "you'll stay with us, won't you?"; Philip Hayton's "that's it, that's all from the BBC World newsroom in London for now"; or Stephen Cole's "You're watching World!" and Lyse's version: "You're wotching BBC Wuuuuuuuurrrrld". Great times



Yes, no strands at that point. All World News. The most variation you got was the re-introduction of The World Today in September 2001 but even that was pretty much just WN with different titles and an integrated edition of WBR.

The whole channel was just magnificently simple but effective between 1999 and 2007. Even the introduction of BBC Four News/The World was tolerable. I always saw that as BBC World's equivalent of Newsnight, with some in-depth, analytical reporting. It was the introduction of World News Today and World News America that started the ball rolling on the path we've reached now. And the 2010 relaunch really sped it up. They seemed to take a decision around that time that simple news bulletins were unfashionable and wanted to jazz it up with lots of appointment-to-view programmes. The problem is, I feel they went too far and there are now too few editions of simple World News. You need something ordinary so that the flagship strand programmes stand out a bit.