BBC2 Saturday Morning News 24

TW

Turnbull and Williams 16 November 2003 1:40am

nwtv2003 posted:

Weekend 24 just seems to be a completely different programme now, as it is a complete relay of N24, where as 5 years ago it was a programme which was presented from the newsroom, had some news, more sport and more weekendy features in a N24 style of way, but I assume these sort of themes have disappeared. (The last time I was up before 9am on a Saturday was in June, in London when I didn't watch much TV)

Weekend 24 (and indeed Sunday Breakfast on BBC1) isn't quite like the rest of News 24's output - it is actually a bit of a hybrid, a mix of Breakfast and News 24. It is more "newsy" than weekday Breakfast, but there are more "weekendy" features than you see normally on News 24, including a full newspaper review. It is presented by Breakfast's presenters too. I think it's a good programme - my only question is why it's still called Weekend 24 and not Breakfast, when we get Breakfast on a Sunday that seems exactly the same.

And don't forget, when you talk about simulcasting News24 on BBC2 on a Saturday morning, this is just the BBC's weekend version of Breakfast - a positive development in terms of the amount of news coverage available compared to the 5 minute summary we used to get. I would argue that this means that the BBC are informing and educating more than they used to be, certainly on weekend mornings.

RE

Re-it-er-ate 16 November 2003 10:16am

Weekend 24 also lacks enough decent reporters and live interviews, compared to the rest of Breakfast / BBC One.

Normally theres the top story reported on by some random person who has no reporting ability. Then theres a brief summary of the main stories, with no reports generally, albeit the odd one by Yvonne Ndgege (sp?) on a top political story when she cant even speak properly.

After about 7 mins theyve summarised ALL the news stories, had about 2 reports, then read emails and talk about rubbish for the next half hour.

Then on the back half hour they tend to have some dreadful programme like Gate 24 with "him", or My Politics.

The only good things used to be the paper review, thats been scaled down now because of the CSO setup, the presenters and the live weather. Lets face it, the journalism was awful. The whole early morning sector needs some decent reporting!

ST

Still 16 November 2003 11:21am

Simon_Luxton posted:

Indeed, and now they're threatening to show N24 during BBC2 downtime (and already have done on a couple of occasions).

Another equally convenient schedule filler appears to be CBBC/CBeebies. Why does BBC1 feel it necessary to start children's programming at 6am Saturdays? Only eight years ago it didn't begin until 7:30am at the weekend. And most of it's repeats...

If BBC1 clawed back CBBC to 7am on Saturdays, BBC2 would not need to start until 7am at weekends (News 24 would be on BBC1 until 7). Meanwhile this year has seen weekday Learning Zone lose an hour to...CBBC. Whatever happened to "educate, inform and entertain"?

Perhaps they put CBBC on as early as 6am because that is when a lot of children are getting up wanting to watch some cartoons or whatever. I can see no benefit whatsoever in having both channels starting up an hour later. And to answer your question - Weekend 24 does the informing and educating, whilst cbbc does the entertaining.

Or is it just a case that you want more ceefax?

NG

noggin Founding member 16 November 2003 2:19pm

I think Weekend 24 is a legacy of an older weekend News 24 structure. Shortly after News 24 launched BBC Two started to opt-in between 0800 and 0900 for an hour long show on Saturday mornings, called Weekend 24. This was very different - and long before the merged BBC One/BBC News 24 Breakfast programme Mon-Fri.

Weekend 24 was originally produced by the News 24 Breakfast team, and presented by the News 24 Breakfast presenters (David Robertson, Sarah Montague, Chris Eakin originally, then later Jane Hill escaped overnights and replaced Sarah) It was massively different in style and structure to the normal News 24 output - but as the channel evolved it slowly became less different.

(November 2003)