BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

no. She did an afternoon shift with Mathew *mroliwala back in 2005, for an event that I cannot remember.

They should have the presenters work on both channels regularly to increase familiarity when they do these kinds of joint broadcasts.

Or to reduce costs, axe half the nc presenting team and half of world presenting team, cut the nc and merge nc and world together, so only one channel exists. They seem to cope when simulcasting and going to breaks over night and covering them up ok

Or, don't.

I have been really impressed over the past few days/weeks by Babita Sharma on the overnights. She's really come a long way, and has shown the other day that she has a really good light side (anchoring BBC News at the Royal Wedding) and can also deal with breaking news (with the Bin Laden story).

Obviously, it'll be hard for anyone to live up to big Alastair Yates' standards (if he has retired ) but she's a breath of fresh air, especially in comparison to some of the others- I find the Sports man who's been doing the weekends recently to be very wooden, and I always feel uncomfortable when Naga is on- as if I'm on edge for her fluffing up a line. She was better on Working Lunch.

What, don't reduce costs or don't merge channels?

Agreed about both Babita Sharma and Alastair. Do you mean Adnan Nawaz?

I have to admit Naga's a lot more bearable on the 5am hour - I could barely tolerate her on Working Lunch, let alone overnights. I wonder if they're trying out different presenters at the moment, or just using existing presenters to cover particular nights.




Don't merge channels and needlessly cull the presenter count simply to appear to be 'reducing costs'. The former is a ridiculous idea that, with respect, has been laughed off here before. The news channel and World News serve very different agendas and demographics the vast majority of the time - and there's regularly criticism of the way breaking domestic news is handled during the shared overnight bulletins where, like the British earthquake, the news is useless to foreign viewers. The channels have minimal budgets compared to many other BBC operations, and serve very useful functions.

And the number of presenters on something like the BBC News channel is an irrelevant figure in terms of cuts - especially during the day, it is vital to have presenters prepared and not over-stretched to deal with the countless interviews they have to conduct and breaking news stories they have to deal with. Reducing the numbers wouldn't help save any meaningful figure, but would leave the remaining presenters over-stretched and struggling. I'd argue daytime News Channel deal with a lot more live interviews and cover more stories than Sky, for example, and axing presenters like Business and Sports presenters would give you puzzled hosts asking generic questions.

The BBC can make cost savings - I think most people accept that - but I challenge you or others to find actual areas at the NC and WN where any significant figure can be saved without reducing the quality and services offered and needed. For the vast majority of the time, it would be inconceivable to merge the two channels except in the rare cases where both channels are covering a single story of world-importance for lengthy periods and it makes sense to pool operations.

Kirsty Lang presenting The Hub tonight for the first time ever since the slot was branded as such. She's rather good on it, actually. Somehow manages to make it quite pacey and interesting.

Don't merge channels and needlessly cull the presenter count simply to appear to be 'reducing costs'. The former is a ridiculous idea that, with respect, has been laughed off here before. The news channel and World News serve very different agendas and demographics the vast majority of the time - and there's regularly criticism of the way breaking domestic news is handled during the shared overnight bulletins where, like the British earthquake, the news is useless to foreign viewers. The channels have minimal budgets compared to many other BBC operations, and serve very useful functions.

And the number of presenters on something like the BBC News channel is an irrelevant figure in terms of cuts - especially during the day, it is vital to have presenters prepared and not over-stretched to deal with the countless interviews they have to conduct and breaking news stories they have to deal with. Reducing the numbers wouldn't help save any meaningful figure, but would leave the remaining presenters over-stretched and struggling. I'd argue daytime News Channel deal with a lot more live interviews and cover more stories than Sky, for example, and axing presenters like Business and Sports presenters would give you puzzled hosts asking generic questions.

The BBC can make cost savings - I think most people accept that - but I challenge you or others to find actual areas at the NC and WN where any significant figure can be saved without reducing the quality and services offered and needed. For the vast majority of the time, it would be inconceivable to merge the two channels except in the rare cases where both channels are covering a single story of world-importance for lengthy periods and it makes sense to pool operations.[/quote]

How about simulcasting the business updates with world, and placing BBC news programmes such as newsnight, world programmes such as gmt and the hub. Make the national presenters remain on-air longer e.g. Sophie does the 12-2, George 5-7 and Huw 10-12

[quote="House" pid="705983"]

Sorry, but this isn't really true. Most News Channel presenters are on air for no more than three hours. And the duties are equally shared because there are two of them. On World, it's considerably less. Nik Gowing's Hub is about an hour and a half, with news updates, sport and business. Impact Asia with Mishal Hussein is three repeated half hours usually. You could easily slash the number of presenters by making the senior staff be on air for longer. It's very rare that an interview lasts longer than three minutes... there are only so many questions that can be asked in that time. During a big, breaking news story, like Osama's killing, there's an impossibility to prepare if you're live on air. Presenters just have to get on with it. On the NC, Maxine Mawhinney is on air for about six hours a day... she never comes across as being unbriefed or stretched. If you're going to pay presenters a hundred thousand pounds plus, they shouldn't need to "be prepared". They should be already. Everyone else works an eight or nine hour day... why shouldn't they?

[quote="newscentre" pid="706000"]

I agree, surely sophie raworth is not being utilised to the best of the BBC's ability. At least George and Huw are on air for 1 and a half hours a day compared to the 30 mins of Sophie. As 'the one' is produced and controlled by the nc, can't Jane hill or Matthew Amroliwala stay on air for the half hour (like they did yesterday)

[quote="news junkie" pid="706003"]

Yeah, but Sophie doesn't come in at 12.45pm and sit down and read the news at 1. She is involved in the editorial aspect of the programme too and writing the scripts, researching the stories for interviews etc.