Discussion: Robert Peston and the BBC/ ITV

I think the latest I heard was it would start in May - and it's all but confirmed it's in a 10am slot.

So there have to find a 35mins filler? Shame the programme is not going out at 5pm it could have fitted in well at that point in time.

If the 5 minute morning ITV News Headlines are kept consistently in the schedule every week, they would only need a half hour 'filler', which would be a lot easier

I don't know why ITV bothered with news headlines on weekend mornings. Some weekends they're there and on others they're not.

Bit late in the day at five. These shows are supposed to set the agenda of the day, with clips from interviews running all day on the news channels. I think five o'clock is too late for those sort of things to gain traction.

It's hardly early evening viewing. 10am or 10pm would be best, setting the agenda for the next day if in the later slot.

Surely scheduling at 10am would be a mistake given that very few people are going to watch Marr and then switch over to watch a near identical show on ITV and then possibly switch back for the Sunday Politics. Granted the programmes on BBC One at that time are nothing more than dull Sunday debate programmes that only exist to fill the religious quota, but it does seem like the News at Ten argument again. They might as well schedule them to clash as it seems unlikely that anyone will watch both if they're scheduled to follow each other.

And in the unlikely event of somebody not watching Marr...?

Well, you could argue it seems bizarre that anyone would want to watch Andrew Marr and then an hour later watch Sunday Politics which seems to do very similar things (a bit different in the days of Frost and On The Record when they were several hours apart), so if people are happy enough to watch two political programmes on a Sunday (for fun, as well! Don't they know it's the weekend?) I suppose they'll happily watch a third. Murnaghan on Sky News is already on at 10am doing the same kind of thing.

They should just stick it in the middle of a Jeremy Kyle double bill and see if anyone notices the difference. Both certainly require lie detectors.

Plus of course there are enough MPs and paper reviewers available to go around.

Peston's guest will be able to react to what the opposition MP has said on Marr.

I think going directly against Andrew Marr would be disastorous as Marr has a great reputation as does his programme. Running it at 10am would be a bit of a gamble but might be wiser as you would have different MPs and guests as well as different views & discussions altogether. Have they confirmed if each programme will be an hour long?