BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

DQF news from BBC Ariel says that the News Channel will lose one presenter, three Newsnight reporters will go and there will be more sharing with this programme and other news programmes on Radio 4.

More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/17524309

More details from Broadcast:

Business news cut from News Channel to focus on "the main stories of the day and on breaking news”

Show Me the Money also cut from News Channel on Sundays with Declan Curry. Another back-hour programme to go is On The Road With..., amidst a wider cut in spending of non-rolling news programmes.

Increased hours of single-headed presentation and changes in presenter rota on News Channel

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/broadcasters/dqf-job-cuts-hit-bbc-news/5039789.article

As long as they don't tamper with the Maitlis and Sopel pairing then I'll be OK with that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it is my opinion on they two.

Ore Oduba making an appearance on the sports bulletins in Salford today. He's not too bad.

Shame 'On the road' is being axed - I thought it was one of the better 'filler' programmes, and can't be that costly to make (if I remember correctly there's only a presenter/producer, cameraman and editor)?

In terms of reducing the number of presenters, as said before the logical thing to do would be to make the 18:30-21:30 shift single-headed, with the 22:30-00:30 presenter starting an hour earlier (with the Ten off). Then you effectively remove two presenters from the rota (I'm guessing something like moving Joanna to afternoons, Ben solo on weekday evenings, Annita Friday-Sunday evenings and Clive filling in throughout the week on the NC, WN and weekend Network bulletins, replacing some of the shifts otherwise taken by freelancers like Adam Parsons and Tim Willcox).

I suspect you'd also lose a freelance/relief presenter or two because of the reduction in available shifts. Moving to a single-headed format during the day (on weekdays) would be a foolish move.

Actually I think the 8:30am shift could work single-headed. There tends to not be a huge amount of news breaking until the 11am shift, particularly with Carrie still being off. When Carrie is well enough to come back I would make the schedule...

08:00-10:00 Matthew Amroliwala
10:00-13:00 Jon Sopel & Jane Hill (Fri: Clive Myrie & Sophie Long)
14:00-17:00 Simon McCoy & Carrie Gracie (Fri: Maxine Mawhinney)
18:30-22:00 Joanna Gosling (Fri: Annita McVeigh)
22:30-01:00 Chris Eakin (Fri: Tim Willcox)

I would let Ben Brown go, I don't think he's great on the NC and much better as a correspondent. I would move Simon and Carrie to 2pm where they could be shown off to a larger audience and also still present together. Jon also works best with a co-presenter. For the weekends...

09:00-16:00 Maxine Mawhinney (also lunchtime news)
16:00-19:00 Clive Myrie (also Saturdays news; Mishal Husain on Sundays)
19:00-00:00 Annita McVeigh

Both Clive and Annita would keep 3 days and we would reduce the slot in which random presenters appear on both Friday and Saturday. All-in-all a saving of 7 presenters.

I'm not sure I even see the need to go single headed. Merge the morning shifts into one 8:30am-1pm shift (the O'Clock News presenter can stay on until 2pm) and scrap the 8pm update presenter, which could easily be done by someone else. That would cut 3 roles straight off.

Two problems with the merging the 8:30am-11am shift and 11am-2pm shift together - first one is that the presenters most likely won't spent that long on air. The second problem is that they still have to pay the presenters to cover those extra hours so it's a very minimal cost saving!

The shift was 9am-1pm for many years from the launch in 97, so no reason why the presenters can't be on air that long. And the cost of a slight pay rise for say Simon and Carrie to stay on for two hours extra would be more than compensated for by axing Matthew and Jane (as a hypothetical) as presenters aren't payed per hours on air.

Yes, I guess you are right but it still wouldn't be a large reduction in costs. Personally I'd keep dual headed presentation between 11am and 5pm when the bigger stories are going on. The rest could be single headed.

Well I agree if you have to have single headed presentation then 11 until 5 are the key hours to protect. I'd just rather it was avoided - the presentation is certainly a lot more stale when single headed at the weekend and I think there are other ways of saving money.

Oooh who could be the sacked presenter??? perhaps BBC Tim or Small Matthew or Sleepy McCoy or Carrie my salary is £92,000. Really? come on... it is none of our business to be speculating on this issue. (However much we'd like to see the back of the Squeaky Mouse Lady)

In all likelihood this one presenter that will be lost has already gone... Louise Minchin is off to Salford. They will take the opportunity to do a reshuffle now they arent holding a seat for her.

As for the schedule speculation from aprilj and others... Keep your dreamed-up rotas where they belong... in your dreams.

Another simple solution is to get the duty news channel presenter to present the BBC One bulletins on Saturday and Sunday nights, they manage it perfectly fine for the lunchtime bulletins on weekends. I don't accept the line that 'BBC 1 want a familiar face to present the news in the evening', when the likes of Matthew Amroliwala, Clive Myrie, Simon McCoy and Jane Hill have often presented them. If you didn't watch the BBC News channel you wouldn't know who half of them were anyway, so that line doesn't really wash. (Before anyone comments, I know Simon McCoy has covered breakfast a handful of times, likewise Jane Hill on the News at One, they are not household names though). Anyhow, it's often a repeat of the same half hour of News channel thats been shown before, just with a different presenter.

I can't help but think that when the news channel goes single headed, the channel is going to end up dreadfully stale. There's often lack of energy/originality on the channel sometimes as is with some parings etc, even with the current double headed presentation (Sopel/Maitlis & Gracie/McCoy aside). They will have to do something.