BBC News Channel/BBC World News Merger - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: BBC News Channel/BBC World News Merger (/showthread.php?tid=103)

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RE: BBC News Channel/BBC World News Merger - DTV - 22-02-2023

At this point, I feel like we really have to wait and see what the UK opt actually is in practice before we write it off completely. Of course in the absence of information there will always be speculation, but it is clear that we now have to wait and see (partially because it sometimes seems like the BBC themselves don't know what is happening).

On the plus side, this forum's expectations are so low that it wouldn't actually be hard for the BBC to leave us all pleasantly surprised by the service.

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RE: BBC News Channel/BBC World News Merger - all new phil - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 11:49 AM)Matrix Wrote:  

(22-02-2023, 11:41 AM)Moz Wrote:  That could be a clever move from BBC News - putting the UK breaking news opt-out via a red button sending you to an iPlayer stream, rather than the UK broadcast changing.

This way they could monitor how much interest there is, and work out the cost per button push!

If a major UK story breaks and very few people press red to watch the coverage, then they know to scale it back. However if every time UK viewers are given the opportunity to watch the break away service tens of thousands choose to view, then they know it’s worth expanding the offering.

This is assuming a degree of digital literacy (and connected devices), though. 

I’m not a fan of not doing something that will benefit the majority because a small minority have low ‘digital literacy’.

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chris - chris - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 01:27 PM)DTV Wrote:  At this point, I feel like we really have to wait and see what the UK opt actually is in practice before we write it off completely. Of course in the absence of information there will always be speculation, but it is clear that we now have to wait and see (partially because it sometimes seems like the BBC themselves don't know what is happening).

On the plus side, this forum's expectations are so low that it wouldn't actually be hard for the BBC to leave us all pleasantly surprised by the service.

Not sure about that - I think some people genuinely think there will be a team sitting there twiddling their thumbs, waiting for UK breaking news to happen.

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RE: chris - Former Member 406 - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 04:40 PM)chris Wrote:  I think some people genuinely think there will be a team sitting there twiddling their thumbs, waiting for UK breaking news to happen.

This taps into exactly what I've genuinely been wondering regarding the occasional ad-hoc UK opt-outs.

There clearly won't be a team (however small) sitting about for whole shifts just on the off-chance that UK breaking news happens, of course. So...

I wonder exactly what people and resources will be pulled into action for UK opt-outs, with no detriment to whatever they'd otherwise be doing, and how quickly they can be mobilised when the need arises.

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RE: chris - Radio_man - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 08:07 PM)Former Member 406 Wrote:  

(22-02-2023, 04:40 PM)chris Wrote:  I think some people genuinely think there will be a team sitting there twiddling their thumbs, waiting for UK breaking news to happen.

This taps into exactly what I've genuinely been wondering regarding the occasional ad-hoc UK opt-outs.

There clearly won't be a team (however small) sitting about for whole shifts just on the off-chance that UK breaking news happens, of course. So...

I wonder exactly what people and resources will be pulled into action for UK opt-outs, with no detriment to whatever they'd otherwise be doing, and how quickly they can be mobilised when the need arises.

I wonder whether we could see presenter-reporters reporting from home studio set-ups, as Katty Kay did during the height of Covid? Didn't Ros Atkins also do OS from his home studio at times during the lockdowns?
That could be a quick way at weekends for example, for an "on call" reporter to get onto air.

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RE: chris - all new phil - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 08:07 PM)Former Member 406 Wrote:  

(22-02-2023, 04:40 PM)chris Wrote:  I think some people genuinely think there will be a team sitting there twiddling their thumbs, waiting for UK breaking news to happen.

This taps into exactly what I've genuinely been wondering regarding the occasional ad-hoc UK opt-outs.

There clearly won't be a team (however small) sitting about for whole shifts just on the off-chance that UK breaking news happens, of course. So...

I wonder exactly what people and resources will be pulled into action for UK opt-outs, with no detriment to whatever they'd otherwise be doing, and how quickly they can be mobilised when the need arises.

But that’s no different to how anything happens. The very nature of news is that it is largely unexpected. What do you think happens if a bomb goes off somewhere? They put the resource where it needs to be. There won’t be a bomb team waiting around to be deployed, they’ll be journalists working on things already that they’ll have to leave. 

Journalism is a multi-skilled profession more so than ever these days. Everyone increasingly needs to know how to do anything. We’ll no doubt end up with a team of reporters who can go live on air as and when required, but their core role won’t be presenter.

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RE: chris - DTV - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 08:07 PM)Former Member 406 Wrote:  This taps into exactly what I've genuinely been wondering regarding the occasional ad-hoc UK opt-outs.

There clearly won't be a team (however small) sitting about for whole shifts just on the off-chance that UK breaking news happens, of course. So...

I wonder exactly what people and resources will be pulled into action for UK opt-outs, with no detriment to whatever they'd otherwise be doing, and how quickly they can be mobilised when the need arises.

Fundamentally, the details of the UK opt are scant - what the team consists of, how frequently they'll opt, the logistics of it, etc. hasn't been publicly fleshed out. My guess is that the team will, in addition to providing the breaking news opt, have other functions as well - possibly multi-media, possibly also contributing to the joint channel when not opted-out*. My reading of the most recent scraps of detail is that the opt will be more frequent than rare (which would ask why they can't provide an opt-out as norm, dropping it during major world stories) and there will certainly be occasions, such as election campaigns, when opt-outs are the norm.

With regard to the logistics, one of the more recent articles suggested that the team and studio will be based in the former Outside Source area - possibly suggesting a set-up similar to the daytime news summaries when they started out where presenter and production team sat next to each other on set. This would allow you to go on air pretty much as soon as possible.

* I have been thinking that it might be good to have the duty UK-opt presenter, when not opted-out, present an hourly UK news segment, in the vein of the old Business and Sport segments on the News channel.

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RE: BBC Breakfast - Brekkie - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 05:55 PM)alfiejmulcahy Wrote:  

(22-02-2023, 05:40 PM)AaronLancs Wrote:  Going into conjecture territory here.

Wonder if that is why Carol Lowe over on Twitter has mentioned that NWT is either among the last or is the last to receive a Studio B style regional studio as they are seeing what the situation is with Sportsday / Sport Today* first and hoping to do an instant transfer from the current SQ2 - I believe it is called as it was alluded to either in the Blue or Purple Places - to the new studio when the time comes. Kind of hedging one's bets given the amount of shared staff for Breakfast and NWT and the ease of using one studio instead of two.

*Delete as appropriate for whatever brand they go for.

I can see them keeping Sport Today and Sportsday, purely due to video and image rights.

The sensible thing would be to keep two opts each hour, at which point the news channel can focus on UK news whilst World is viewing sport and vice versa. 

As for Breakfast - they could really have shared with BBC Sport ever since they decamped into the studio for the 2016 Olympics, with any clashing opts just switching to the NWT studio (with NWT updates in the bulletin studio).   It probably is slightly easier though for NWT to share the space.


Admin edit: this post and the subsequent related discussion has been moved across from the BBC Breakfast thread.

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RE: BBC News Channel/BBC World News Merger - ginnyfan - 22-02-2023

Martine Croxall should be the main presenter of these UK opt outs since she is the most vocal about how bad all of this is, has quite a following and seems to prefer broadcasting to UK audience only.

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RE: chris - Stockland Hillman - 22-02-2023

(22-02-2023, 08:32 PM)all new phil Wrote:  

(22-02-2023, 08:07 PM)Former Member 406 Wrote:  This taps into exactly what I've genuinely been wondering regarding the occasional ad-hoc UK opt-outs.

There clearly won't be a team (however small) sitting about for whole shifts just on the off-chance that UK breaking news happens, of course. So...

I wonder exactly what people and resources will be pulled into action for UK opt-outs, with no detriment to whatever they'd otherwise be doing, and how quickly they can be mobilised when the need arises.

But that’s no different to how anything happens. The very nature of news is that it is largely unexpected. What do you think happens if a bomb goes off somewhere? They put the resource where it needs to be. There won’t be a bomb team waiting around to be deployed, they’ll be journalists working on things already that they’ll have to leave. 

Journalism is a multi-skilled profession more so than ever these days. Everyone increasingly needs to know how to do anything. We’ll no doubt end up with a team of reporters who can go live on air as and when required, but their core role won’t be presenter.

What you see on screen is a fraction of the staff needed to operate a live insert

We're talking about a major story that's important for UK audiences but deemed irrelevant for world. Let's look at what's required:

- A director/multi skilled technical operator who can run a live breaking news gallery  (the events themselves would require more skill than a canned the night before  Breakfast opt)

- Multi skill operators to do edits, graphics etc to the sourced pictures, audio etc to provide the "wallpaper"breaking news requires in the early stages; extra resources for ingest and traffic.

- A live  producer who can pull all the elements together for the live broadcast, including making sensitive decisions on pictures used (think Grenfell,  think twin towers) compliance , taste and decency  questions arise all the time.

- Multiple production journalists to compile and verify the news events, get approval for social media pics,  find contributors,  archive pics, develop a narrative for the story.

- Journalists to do actual reports on the news events, on the scene and on the topic 

- an output editor to decide treatment and make complex editorial decisions

- experienced presenter who can deal with complex breaking news logistics and verbalise the events context and information in a journalistic way.

All these are dedicated to the live event, so have to stop what they are doing if moved internally (but the World feed continues,  as does Network bulletin production)

If its a event big enough to justify a UK opt, then its way, way past the point that a reporter "hanging around" can grab a tech spare tech op and head to a clip studio can manage

This ability is whats being lost so the BBC can spend an extra £150m plus on Podcasts that have few listeners and online stories that could be written  now by Chat GPT

So no, no journalist has the multiskills required

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