Kevin Bakhurst to leave BBC News

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0710/rte-news-kevin-bakhurst.html

A great appointment by RTE but I think Kevin will be missed at the BBC.

It's hard to argue with the job he did at the News Channel.

Always enjoy his tweets as well!

Sad to see him leave BBC News. Almost always got a reply from him to my tweets - very few people in his position would be so open to members of the general public.

The News Channel has improved in leaps & bounds since he took over.

Must be gutted to be leaving before he gets to play with NBH!

I can only reiterate the fact that Kevin has replied each time to each of my tweets, and has been very obliging and welcoming to any comments and questions that I had.

He seems like a good bloke and has done a very good job indeed on the News Channel. As his colleagues have said on Twitter, he's surely a loss for BBC News.

And yes, poor thing that he won't see what News Channel will be like in Broadcasting House!

Well; my perception was he always came over as rather arrogant, and patronising whenever he appeared on Newswatch !!

Newswatch is just a gripe session... so I really wouldn't judge him by his appearances on the programme.

A big big loss...I am sure that he will be back though. The BBC often likes people to go elsewhere before returning in even more senior positions.

Those were my exact thoughts. Hopefully won't be long before he's back.

Be interesting to see what he does at RTÉ News, which is very conservative - although it changes its set about every three years or so, the programme formats, on RTÉ One at any rate, have hardly seen any changes at all since 1990, and the on-screen talent hasn't changed that much in the last ten years either.

Probably the most exciting thing they did in all that time was News 2 on what was then N2, but that's long become just another news bulletin.

Worth noting that he will also have charge of Current Affairs at RTÉ which is just as conservative, although they seem to have a good thing going on Monday evenings with Pat Kenny's Frontline programme which had the potential to just be a reworking of Questions and Answers (RTÉ's straight copy of Question Time) but has become a programme that has tapped into the mood of the nation during the recession. As long as he doesn't touch the title sequence of The Week in Politics, as long in the tooth as it may be (it must be at least ten years old now) it is a masterpiece!

Would you blame him, It's bloody NewsWatch

Is that Charlie Bird's old job.

Well, more often that not, Newswatch does indeed feature over-dramatic complaints, but there are often vaild underlying points that are made. Bakehurst comes on, and just sweeps everything aside with the same, 'the BBC are right, and you're wrong' attitude.

There is one BBC News exec who appears on there, who has far more considered approach, I can't remember his name, but <shock horror> I have heard him say, 'on this occasion we (the BBC) got it wrong'.