BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

She kind of took over Gavin Estler's role as the News channel's 'senior' presenter hosting the 5 and Dateline following his departure and the restructure of the channel.

It's a show of no news or CA value whatsoever. Just whatever miserable story they can concoct from the tabloids in time for the morning, whilst most of the audience is watching Kyle.

That position was potentially temporary due to Carrie Gracie's extended leave from mid-2018. When Carrie originally returned to the NC, Dateline was mostly presented by her, with Jane more of a relief presenter. I guess the BBC's senior presenters are taking long leaves of absence at the moment (Tomasz hasn't been seen for a while since the New Year), presumably to prepare for the lead up to the Brexit stuff happening :shrug:

All 3 of the regular dateline presenters left the BBC in a matter of months during early 2017 at which point dateline seemed to become a rotation of Jane and Shaun Ley. When Carrie returned to the channel in early 2018 she began to present some editions of the programme but Jane and Shaun both continued to appear regularly. Jane has also been a semi-regular presenter of Saturday PM on radio 4 and the BBC1 bulletins on Saturday's which will have limited the number of datelines she was available for.
Other than potentially some on location appearances many years ago I don't think Carrie has ever presented either the one or the five which have been the majority of Jane's work in recent years.

Also managed to make headlines in New Zealand for the wrong reasons

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/22/jacinda-ardern-asked-in-bbc-interview-if-she-plans-to-propose-to-her-partner

I don't like the current VD format, but there isn't much else that can be said for now.

That's interesting because its always seemed to me that Jane is the more senior of the two on the channel.

Dateline's not exactly a flagship programme and Carrie's return was at around the same time that other changes meant Jane started do more BBC1 bulletins.

Sophie Raworth has just announced on the BBC News at Six that George Alagiah will return to the programme tomorrow.

Hopefully it's permanent.

Yep. I heard that announcement too. That's brilliant news about George returning to the programme tomorrow.

Lovely surprise.

I know, I just remember that after Carrie returned, she handled pretty much all of the broadcasts for Dateline, until she went off air for most of 2018. /shrug


@AlexS Possibly, though from what I have seen, Shaun has tended to be "primary" presenter (he is the only one who gives a lengthy introduction which includes the description of the programme), with Carrie/Jane being relief (usually because Shaun is NC presenter when they record Dateline London live).

Re George: Glad to see he will be returning, hopefully it is a permanent return