BBC News: Presenters, correspondent & rotas

I like Clive too. Very smooth operator and seems like a nice guy too. Also someone who has built himself up gradually over the last 10 years from doing weekend evenings on the News Channel, to getting the Papers and covering other weekday shifts, to doing BBC One weekend bulletins, to doing the One before eventually doing the Six and Ten. That’s what I call a career path!

Also his many years of reporting from the field more than qualifies him to anchor on location during massive events.

The likes of Sophie Raworth and Fiona Bruce would be unlikely to take a full-time role on the 6 or 10, because quite frankly they’ve moved on from that. They’re all over the BBC in a variety of formats, more so than the others.

Mishal Hussain is a great shout.

Trevor's strength lay in the authority he brought to a pre-prepared, scripted bulletin. He did occasionally anchor bulletins on location, such as from Washington or the Middle East during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars. And he did the odd newsflash and special event, like Diana's death, 9/11, Royal weddings etc. But when it came to an open-ender format, e.g. the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, Diana's death in 1997 or the Iraq bombings in 1998, it tended to fall to people like John Suchet or Dermot Murnaghan to anchor the rolling coverage.

I believe when the ITN News Channel launched in 2000, many newscasters were given the option to take up a role on it. Some jumped at it, like John Suchet. But others turned it down. I can only imagine that Trevor turned it down if he was asked - I couldn't see him handling rolling news very well. It just wasn't his strength.

I've read before Trevor had it written in his contract that he didn't have to present on the ITV News Channel. Indeed, I think he was the only ITN presenter (for ITV News programmes) who didn't appear.

Funnily enough, part of the reason Dermot Murnaghan jumped ship to the BBC was because he didn't want to present on the news channel, but after a few years at Breakfast he'd obviously changed his mind when moving to Sky.

The BBC has many perfectly good newscasters, sure. But future stars with the gravitas to be their main face? Not so sure.

Although, is that not based on the shape of the bulletins at the moment? What’s to say people like Tina Daheley, Christian Fraser or Ros Atkins wouldn’t be the perfect fit?

Mishal presents the Today programme on Radio 4 and does documentaries for BBC World News. if she did move to the Six would she return to Impact too? maybe she could do Monday – Wednesday doing Impact/Six with Yalda doing Thursday–Friday?

Christian Fraser, Clive Myrie, Mishal Husain, Sophie Raworth - all have bags of gravitas. As does everyone (almost) who appears on BBC News at 1, 6 and 10.

ITN deliberately made a point of alternating people between presenting and reporting, to emphasise to the audience that they weren't just reading a script but had credibility and experience. Some didn't enjoy it much, though, I know Michael Nicholson said he didn't really like newsreading and was always itching to get back to reporting. But as you say, Trevor McDonald had vast experience as a reporter before he became the main anchor.



I remember an interview with John Suchet at the time saying he jumped at the chance to go on the ITN News Channel because he was convinced the future of news was rolling news, and had been desperate to ITN to launch a channel.

Suchet had presented ITN's all nighter for the start of the Gulf War, which you could probably argue was the first case of rolling news on terrestial TV. He talks about it in the Newsflash documentary and he seemed to enjoy the adrenaline rush.

For anybody who hasn't seen it:

Actually I take it back. Victoria Derbyshire. Probably one of the best and most human presenters there is right now, across all channels.