Victoria Derbyshire (the programme) - now with added Reith

The weirdest intro to a BBC News Online story I think I've ever seen. Either it's your story or it's not.

A lot of anger from journalists on Twitter, both in broadcast and print/online, tonight. Bearing in mind it was one of the few bits of the BBC regularly breaking stories - or building on others' stories rather than just leeching off them as much of the rest of the BBC does - it's easy to see why. The Guardian's UK news editor and Sophy Ridge from Sky News here...

When we published the first football abuse stories, it was this programme that helped bring home the scale of the scandal on a human level. Remarkable, heartbreaking TV. https://t.co/j1qvV7Oaxk

— Owen Gibson (@owen_g) January 22, 2020

I guess the show is seen as a factual news show but there is no reason why the show can’t drop part of the news and be a factual magazine show and move it exclusively to BBC One and iPlayer. Like straight after breakfast 9:15 - 10am. That way the show continues but comes out of the daytime budget rather than the news and would free up the BBC News Channel. I guess the only problem then would be the daytime budget.

If anything, VD was a lot better when it was cut to an hour. No shoehorning in weather forecasts and the like to satisfy the NC viewers, they tightened it up which made the more fluffier elements more tolerable, but one issue that remained throughout was that it never fitted in on the News Channel with the ticker/flipper providing a tokenistic news service while it was on.

The type of human interest journalism that Derbyshire showcased has a future online thanks to the work that the team put in, but it was always a strange commission purely down to the fact News had to make huge cuts, yet spent more money on the format than the cheaper rolling news bulletins it replaced.

Just because the show is (reportedly) ending doesn't mean the features/interviews/stories which Derbyshire's show was known for have to disappear as well?


What I mean by that is surely a role could be created for Derbyshire and her team to do features/interviews/stories that will mostly be found on social media (ie; still reaching the audience which the show amassed) and have any major pieces be featured across BBC News on TV and radio (eg; showing a news-making interview on say Breakfast or the 10 O'Clock News)

Agree completely the problem is that there is no money in the pot for it. The News channel should be just that with the news teams making programmes for BBC1 etc. Shows like Click, Travel shows should be on other channels, but because of politics you cant force your programmes on other channels budgets.
The Government should admit they've mucked up and hand back the millions they took from the licnce fee for defuncts local TVnad pay up for pensioners & the low paid TV licences.

It costs too much money to light up Studio B that’s why Newsnight is presented in near darkness lol, bbc world news have no issues though and can take back control of studio b light it up as they please and give Lucy Hockings all three hours in one set.

The backlash shows the BBC has a difficult decade ahead- wherever it makes cuts it will anger more people than it pleases.

Or that it costs too much money full stop! It's just taken the BBC nearly 5 years to realize this!

I think they already are, they're made by/for BBC World News.

There's nothing wrong with having them on the news channel, they fill the overnight hours and quieter weekends cheaply

Time to close the BBC down, right? You've called for it often enough.

🙄It's been interesting to see how completely differently the real world views 'Victoria Derbyshire' to TVForum's frothing at the mouth perception of it being "women talking about periods and other such fluff that isn't REAL news 😬😬😬"

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Victoria Derbyshire Show targets its audience brilliantly and is a good show. Should it be on the News Channel? Who knows. Maybe the problem isn’t that the show is out of place on there, maybe it’s that the News Channel neglects such a huge proportion of the audience in the rest of its output. Health stories, debates about quality of social housing - this is the definition of news to so many people more than Brexit, Trump, etc.