BBC News: Presenters, correspondent & rotas

I guess they couldn’t just let Martyn go and had to provide an alternative role if they didn’t want him to be a face on the Nationals anymore.

I’m guessing he declined. He coped well with the rolling news situation of Diana’s death so he would have been quite good at it. But nonetheless it’s a bit of a demotion.

Same happened with Michael Burke who declined the permanent move to News 24 A few years later.

What was the logic for moving Huw and Fiona to 10pm?

Michael Burek wasn't demoted though, Greg Dyke got him to stay on for 18 months after he (and his wife ) wanted him to step down in order for the new '10' bulletin to bed in.

Sissons was though.

I know his wife wasn’t happy because he was home an hour later after the nine became the ten but don’t think he stood down on his own accord. I think he turned down over TV and went to radio 4. When Martyn left he was offered BBC would but turned it down.

I thought Buerk resigned of his own accord, as said here https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/jun/07/bbc.tvnews1. I've read before that he wasn't happy about the move to 10 as well, so that could have had a say in it. IIRC he did a couple of relief shift after he retired, but it was only two or three times. He turned up on Breakfast a few times as well in 2003. Peter Sissons on the other hand, was rather vocal about being shunted off the 10. Obviously he moved to News 24, but was never really suited to rolling news, and having read his autobigraphy, I got the impression he was never particuarly happy there, but he stuck in out for 6 years.

I think Huw and Fiona were moved to the 10 because the 6 was the highest rating News programme at the time, and they wanted the 10 to be the "flagship" bulletin with the most popular presenters.

That's correct - Buerk stayed as long as Sissons and both left the Ten at the same time. Sissons signed off on Wednesday 15th and Buerk on Friday 17th January 2003. The relaunch happened on Monday 20th January 2003 and that's when Huw/Fiona took over the Ten.

Both Buerk and Sissons did present the odd Ten after that - Buerk did a few during the summer of 2003 with his very last ever Ten on 9th January 2004. Sissons did a few more Tens, also through summer 2003, but Sissons' last ever Ten was on 28th October 2004. His last weekend bulletin was on Saturday 9th August 2008.

I'm not really sure why Buerk and Sissons covered the Ten in 2003/2004. It seems a bit strange to have the former regulars who were dropped coming back to fill in for holidays, especially when there were lots of other presenters they could have chosen. I wonder if they had it written into their contracts or something? Maybe it was a little sweetener in addition to their new roles on Radio 4 (Buerk) and Sissons (News 24)?

Ah thanks - that explains it then. Buerk chose to step down, Sissons didn't. But, both stayed on until the January 2003 relaunch and left at the same time. And the 18th months mentioned by Cando is obviously from October 2000 when the Ten launched and the announcement of his resignation in June 2002 (well, approximately 18 months). According to that article, he obviously wanted to step down from the Ten by the end of 2002 but must have been persuaded to see it into 2003 and up until the relaunch.

I don't see what difference that would make to the cuts - surely having a number of versatile presenters who can present any bulletin is better from a budget perspective than having specific designated presenters for each bulletin.

It's a bit like how people complain the Beeb is short of money and then have loads of sports presenters - but they're pretty much all freelance being paid per show, so it almost certainly works out cheaper in the long run than having a few but they're all on the permanent staff. The downside is that they all have other work so their appearances are sporadic and whenever they're available.

In a way we're going back to how it was before the eighties when none of the bulletins had a specific presenter and everyone did every bulletin that happened to come up during their shift. Indeed up until 1981 they had John Edmunds who actually did newsreading as a sideline, as his day job was as a teacher, but when he had some spare time he'd do some freelance shifts.



What that report's trying to say, but not doing it very well, is that in 1999 George was second presenter on the One behind Anna Ford, with Fiona Bruce fulling the same role to Huw on the Six. That revamp was heavily centred around the Six as that was the one with the most changes - it was the first bulletin with integrated regional headlines, and came back after the regional news for an update, with the weather initially moving to 6.55 - and there was initially a "family" of reporters who would report exclusively for the Six, including Sian Williams, Fergus Walsh and Helen Rollason. So for the first few months of that revamp, the Six was pretty much unique among the bulletins and hence covered pretty much entirely by Huw and Fiona.

Actually I remember it being a bit of a surprise when Nicholas Witchell started reading the news again in the summer of 1999, because he hadn't read the news for a while before that, obviously he'd been on Breakfast News for several years, but he came back as a stand-in for a few months. As we've mentioned before, the 1999 revamp was also when John Humphrys finally stopped reading the news after a decade of being a regular stand-in across the bulletins.



I remember when Lewis stopped presenting the Nine back in 1994, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the papers because it was reported they were trying to get him to move to Breakfast News as apparently they didn't have anything else for him, but in the end they found a space on the Six. That was around the time he became a bit of a cause celebre in the papers because he gave some interviews where he said there should be more good news on TV, which everyone took the piss out of and was a bit of an embarrassment for the Beeb, so he wasn't especially in favour with the bosses at the time, I assume.

In Sissons' book he says that when his shifts on News 24 coincided with major breaking stories, like the Glasgow Airport attack, he really enjoyed them and relished doing lots of live interviews for the first time since Channel 4 News. But when there were quiet news days and he was just reading the same stories over and over again, he didn't like it much.



Well, Buerk and Sissons had been there for a long time, Buerk had been there through two revamps, so presumably there was a general feeling that it was time for a change. Actually in Roger Mosey's book he says it wasn't just a case of shifting Huw and Fiona straight from the Six as they they were considering Huw, Fiona and George as the main presenter and did a series of pilots, with Lorraine Heggessey and Jana Bennett also being involved in the discussions as Controller of BBC1 and Director of Television respectively. Of course in the end it turned out that Huw and Fiona did just shift straight across.

Mosey also points out that nobody seemed to notice at the time, but they had a really diverse mix of presenters at the time in terms of age, gender and race.

[quote="Steve Williams" pid="1231245"]

I don't see what difference that would make to the cuts - surely having a number of versatile presenters who can present any bulletin is better from a budget perspective than having specific designated presenters for each bulletin.

It's a bit like how people complain the Beeb is short of money and then have loads of sports presenters - but they're pretty much all freelance being paid per show, so it almost certainly works out cheaper in the long run than having a few but they're all on the permanent staff. The downside is that they all have other work so their appearances are sporadic and whenever they're available.

In a way we're going back to how it was before the eighties when none of the bulletins had a specific presenter and everyone did every bulletin that happened to come up during their shift. Indeed up until 1981 they had John Edmunds who actually did newsreading as a sideline, as his day job was as a teacher, but when he had some spare time he'd do some freelance shifts.



What that report's trying to say, but not doing it very well, is that in 1999 George was second presenter on the One behind Anna Ford, with Fiona Bruce fulling the same role to Huw on the Six. That revamp was heavily centred around the Six as that was the one with the most changes - it was the first bulletin with integrated regional headlines, and came back after the regional news for an update, with the weather initially moving to 6.55 - and there was initially a "family" of reporters who would report exclusively for the Six, including Sian Williams, Fergus Walsh and Helen Rollason. So for the first few months of that revamp, the Six was pretty much unique among the bulletins and hence covered pretty much entirely by Huw and Fiona.

Actually I remember it being a bit of a surprise when Nicholas Witchell started reading the news again in the summer of 1999, because he hadn't read the news for a while before that, obviously he'd been on Breakfast News for several years, but he came back as a stand-in for a few months. As we've mentioned before, the 1999 revamp was also when John Humphrys finally stopped reading the news after a decade of being a regular stand-in across the bulletins.

Yeah, that twigs my memory. I was only 6 at the time of the relaunch but I remember the Six was more of a UK based bulletin, where as 9 was International news. It was emphasised in the opening titles as the 6 had UK cities, whereas the 9 had world locations.

On the reporters, Sian was also third presenter for most of the period (and covered Fiona's mat leave in 2001), I'm guessing she gave up the Special Reporter role though when she took up Breakfast. It was a shame the sports bulletin in the 6 was so short lived in tragic circumstances, but I can understand why they decided not to continue them when Helen died.

The Friday sports bulletin continued for quite a while after Helen Rollason died - certainly well into 2000. Hazel Irvine was the regular presenter if I remember correctly.

It’s interesting that a “time for a change” hasn’t emerged for quite some time. Huw’s now been in place on the 10 for 17 years, through many visual revamps, and George too on the 6. I suspect it’s because BBC TV News remains consistently the highest-rating, and should ITV ever manage to rival that again, things may change.

Just goes to show what 2 strong anchors the BBC have in Huw and George. It's fantastic how after 17 (and the rest) years they're both still greater than ever. Huw actually looks younger! If and when they do leave, it's almost impossible to think who could replace them. Sophie, Clive and Reeta are good but do they have what it takes to be lead anchors full time? The BBC don't really seem to have anyone for a 'road to succession' like they did when the current senior team started out all those years ago.