BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

With respect I beg to differ. You look at how they handle rolling news, for example, coverage usually involves only one of the two presenters speaking for several minutes with rolling pictures taking the visuals to allow the second presenter to be briefed by producers, often in-studio. Once again people are making the common mistake that newsreaders walk into a studio, read an autocue for three hours and go home again. More often than not newsreaders, like the business and sports presenters, are doing other work before or after their shifts. And as we've seen from the likes of Sky News, news channels are poorer for single-headed presentation.

I'd also point out that, statistically, weekend newsreaders have a lot less to deal with than their weekday counterparts. News conferences, announcements, resignations, major political developments and report releases usually happen during the week, and the news channel builds in a lot more pre-recorded programming into its weekend timeslots than weekdays.

I'm not saying newsreaders have the hardest jobs in the world (though there are some good articles around from print journalists who said they'd never imagined how hard the job was, for something that looks so easy) but to assume 'they can be on air longer' without any evidence of what they do outside those on-air shifts is a bit naïve.

Not much news on the weekends? Um... well, the Arab uprsings have more often than not followed Friday prayers. The tusmani happened on a Friday moving onto the weekend... The West started bombing Libya on a Saturday, Osama Bin Laden was killed on a Sunday. Didn't the Queen Mother die at the weekend?
Apart from that....
not much.
Just shows the likes of Karen Gianoni and Maxine are class acts who work their socks off - The rotas should be done through seven, not five days... and I would imagine more people watch at 10am on a Saturday than 10am on a Thursday.

Oh, and Sky is poorer for being singled headed? It does win all the major awards going.... I think the BBC News Channel won an RTS for best sound or something.

I didn't say 'categorically no news happens at the weekend'. I said weekend news coverage tends to be feature more expected, less rapid-fire news, hence producers take no issue with airing repeats of Click, Oddbox, Panorama and Hardtalk, nor simulcast Dateline London each Saturday. Of course breaking stories happen - and the most significant ones usually involve additional senior presenters being drafted in anyway - but usually it's less intensive. And the Arab uprisings? Isn't that when they pooled their coverage with World News as it was a single major worldwide-important story? And they relied heavily on reporters and presenters out in the field, making it completely irrelevant in this discussion.

And if more people watch at 10am on a Saturday than the same time on a Thursday, assuming your logic is that makes it more important, why do all of the BBC's main newsreaders and correspondents appear on weekdays?

And seven day rotas over five days? You mean seven days on, seven days off? (A complete waste of money...) or presenters who work every day? Either way, I think you just lost credibility.

P.S. Have a flick through the archives of the Sky News presentation thread around the time of the last major schedule change. I think you'll find the general consensus here is double headed presentation is best...

Heaven forbid and perish the thought that I lose creadibility on this forum. What I'm suggesting is that news presenters don't work seven days on, seven off... just that they work their alloted days over a seven day period, so news isn't "downgraded" on a weekend especially on a news channel.
If they're presenting a programme such as Newsnight, of course there has to be a lot of preparation and research; interviews and debates can last up to ten or fifteen minutes. But on the NC or BBC World it's increadibly rare that an interview lasts more than three to four minutes. You don't need hours to prepare for that.
What time does Carrie Gracie or Simon McCoy get in in the morning? Let's say 6am. But they're both finished by 11am. That's a five hour day. And the duties are divided between both of them. I would suggest it wouldn't hurt the poor lambs to present 8.30 till 11 and then go back between 12 and 1. Have two others present 11 and 12 and they go back to do 1.30 until 4. Suddenly, you're losing at least one shift off the rota. But it's not working them into the ground.
Finally, just because people on this forum reckon Sky News has gone down hill since they went single headed isn't really a good argument... Sky regularly wins all the top awards. Most of the people on here would love to see a middle aged woman in a frilly blouse sitting at a desk bedecked with a bunch of flowers reading the listings from the TV Times. Doesn't mean that's any good....

Let's bear in mind that it's not just economics at play here. In very simple terms, the issue of viewer fatigue is very much relevant. If any viewer (regardless of which channel they select and regardless of the content of the news/story of the day) switches on and finds the same anchor(s) presenting the news for eleven hours on the trot, they will flick over to another channel, if only to "refresh" their screen.

As such, rolling news, by definition, is end-to-end news and the viewer will expect to see a new set of faces after three or four hours of broadcast. Fact.

Therefore, the scenario adopted by the BBC for the likes of Tim Willcox probably serves to be economical in essence: e.g. morning shift on N24, followed by an afternoon shift on World, then back to N24 for an evening segment: splits up the day and minimises viewer (although not anchor) fatigue.

Speaking as a BBC World viewer, having the two channels combined would be a disaster and would defeat the whole purpose of both. The combo scenario would only suit British viewers, wherever they may be located in the world, as only they would appreciate a national and international news digest from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The average viewer in Chengdu isn't all that bothered about what occurs every day at the Old Bailey.

On the other hand - and perhaps somewhat contradicting the outline above - I felt that the BBC World output on the OBL day was excellent and proved that the channel would vastly benefit from moving to a double-headed bulletin as the norm. Appreciating that there are some additional costs involved, the whole pace and feel of the channel was vastly better than the normal daily single headed monotony. However, that's not to say that combining the output under a single news channel would work.

At the end of the day it comes down to why it matters. From my perspective, having two newsreaders most of the day during weekdays works much better than one, and believe a lot of people share this view. Sure Sky win awards, but this is because of the quality of their reporting not presentation and newsreaders. It's also the second-ranking channel by quite a distance.

You don't need to pool coverage to achieve double headed presentation on BBC World - just look at the late evening slot as they fade out Business Edition.

I'd point out very few presenters on MSNBC in America are on for longer than an hour (the only exception weekdays I can think of is Morning Joe) and CNN's shifts don't seem to be longer than the BBC's. The fact that Maxine covers multiple shifts at weekends is irrelevant - there are many professionals who choose to work overtime, volunteer weekends and overnight shifts and take as much work as they can. That's not to say the vast majority are suited to that, capable of that or should have to do that.

Having a larger pool of newsreaders working all through the week would make little logistical sense, and wouldn't change the fact that fewer reports, interviews and live broadcasts are available at weekends - nor the fact that fewer people tend to watch and they're slower news days.

Picking your own estimates for when newsreaders clock on and off is meaningless and, like BBC WORLD said, viewers get bored. Interviews may not be fifteen minutes long, but over each shift they usually conduct a fair number. To do this, you've got to understand the subject and be briefed and have a good knowledge. Many presenters, including Jane Hill, Jon Sopel, Emily Maitlis, Carrie Gracie and Simon McCoy regularly contribute to other BBC programmes, including Radio, network news bulletins and interviews, often on the same day(s) as News Channel work. They don't turn up, read an Autocue for two and a half hours and go home again.

To pick out one particular point which surprised me:



Seriously? Have you missed the regular criticism of younger, attractive newsreaders on this forum? Seriously? Because I would not particularly call Moira Stuart or Julia Somerville 'middle aged women in frilly blouses sitting at a desk reading from the TV Times'!

And your point is that the popular news channel should do things differently because but the less-popular channel is clearly doing this well because people like it, but that the fact that people don't like it doesn't make it good? What?!

Unless 'newscentre' can find documented proof that studio-based journalists at the BBC are under-worked, I think his/her arguments are redundant.

At the end of the day, though, I think we need to agree to disagree.

I'm not sure if "viewer fatigue" plays a part. Very few people watch a news channel for hours on end.... they catch the the top stories... maybe stay for half an hour. It's why I don't believe that a news channel should have "star" presenters. Noone watches BBC NC because Emily Maitliss is on. They might like her, but equally they might like a "non-name". What you need is good journalists who don't look like Quasi Modo, who can ask a good question and whose eyes don't move when they read the auto-cue. I think News Channels should be staffed by the likes of Karen Gianoni or Peter Dobbie. They're paid well, but not mega-bucks.
Eamon Holmes is paid a fortune to present Sky News Sunrise. Let's say he's paid ten times more than Steve Dixon for example. Has there been a ten times increase in Sky News Sunrise's viewers? No. They barely moved after he joined.

"House"... I've just seen your post.
I, and many others, would love to do a time and motion study on BBC journalists. Some churn it out hourly and work like Trojans. . Others; what on earth do they do? How often do you see a report from the BBC's Arts' Editor, Will Gompertz? And do you really think he's planning work for others to do as the man in charge?
And thankyou for your politeness. A good debate is what this forum needs sometimes, rather that idiots criticsing others for their spelling.
As for the woman in the frilly blouse, I was referring to in vision continuity announcers, not newsreaders. But that's a whole new thread!

I would gladly bet you a case of Glenfiddich that it does!

Tanya Beckett proving to be rather hilarious in her double header with Mike Embley on BBC World. They make an excellent pairing indeed.

Apologises - the 'newscentre' bit was because my original edit wasn't directed specifically at you, so I wanted to make clear (without knowing your name). I then rewrote large amounts to pick up on your points directly.

Where I would agree with you is on many correspondents. Someone like Laura Kuenssberg or Caroline Wyatt I would argue files lots of reports, with plenty of original reporting and good manipulation of their contacts. Someone like Will Gompertz or David Shukman, however, seem to appear far less across all of the Beeb's platforms. I'd argue the US broadcasters are far better at this, as they seemt to limit the number of 'specialist' correspondents to only those with extensive experience and regular reports required, such as Pentagon or White House correspondent. This means a slightly larger group of general reporters make far more appearances on screen and in reports. I rarely see the benefit of having health, environment, business, personal finance, education, science, arts and entertainment correspondents, and believe broadcasters becoming over-reliant on journalists interviewing other journalists (who are ultimately only qualified in journalism) can be very dangerous in terms of quality, debate and bias.

Where I would love to see the BBC improve, and I believe this does fit with what you're arguing, is correspondents appearing on the News Channel in specific shifts.

Take MSNBC as an example. Chuck todd and Savannah Guthrie, the current White House correspondents of NBC News, file reports and do lives from Washington on the Today Show and MSNBC's Morning Joe, then anchor an hour of political news ('The Daily Rundown') at 9am, regularly contribute to a variety of other programming before finally reporting for the main Nightly News that evening. They do the same with Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, does exactly the same with 'Andrea Mitchell Reports' at 1pm.

To me, if you could work something like Laura Kuenssberg reporting for Breakfast and the BBC News Channel, presenting an hour of politics on the channel and finishing on the Six, you could significantly reduce the number of presenters and correspondents while allowing the best of the BBC's reporters to appear as much as possible. Where I disagree is the idea of simply expanding the current slots to reduce the number of presenters, which to me would reduce quality and possibly reduce output (limiting Emily Maitlis and Gavin Esler's abilities to appear on both the NC and Newsnight; Jon Sopel with The Politics Show etc.).

Under a plan like mine, for example, the Political Editor could appear mainly on the News at One and News at Ten, perhaps with reporting on Radio and the NC later in the day, reducing both the number of correspondents and presenters without forcing someone to be under the heavy studio lights, dealing with breaking news with a producer shouting down their ear for five hours.

Interesting to note as well that Todd, Guthrie and Mitchell all present their shifts live on location (whilst they are travelling) whenever they can, which would clearly otherwise be an obstacle.

Where the BBC is better utilising some staff is probably in its sports department, where presenters appear on both the News Channel and World News and also file reports.


I think we can agree there are ways of better utilising staff, I just don't agree with arguments about either extending News Channel shifts or merging the News Channel and World News, nor switching to single-headed presentation.



P.S. - Agreed, debate is good. I'd argue this place's major problem at the moment is a lack of proper debating past a few tired discussions (such as the BBC News and ITV News graphics...).




EDIT: Just seen how long this is. I need to stop now.