Newsreading Easy - Wogan

To a certain extent he's right! Quite often scheduled news bulletins are so tightly scripted for duration purposes that all the job involves is auto-cue reading and pre-prepared questions (and answers!). It doesn't necessarily make the presenters on ITV 1 or BBC 1 any less capable than their rivals - it's just they don't get a chance to prove more to the viewer.

Saying that, I would have liked to have seen Sir Trevor McDonald work a Sky News or News 24 presenting shift. I'm afraid to say his inability to ad lib breaking news would have made him the worst on the team. Thankfully News At Ten is ALL auto-cue reading and even recorded headline sequences - nothing wrong with that though as it looks polished. 24 hours news presenters are a class apart and deserve the money they're paid.

... as an aside Sir Terry has announced this morning confirmation of recent press comments that he will leave his Breakfast Show next year. Chris Evans is to take over.

An interesting aside to this - 2 Daily Telegraph journos tried their hand at presenting the news at ITN on Monday (presumably for a piece that will appear in the paper shortly). They were given the full works – use of the ITV News set, bongs, astons closing titles etc, plus a guiding hand from Mark and Julie. It didn’t stop them being totally useless though!