Newsnight - Printable Version
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RE: Newsnight - rw96 - 27-10-2023
Katie famously also covered when Emily Maitlis was pulled off air the night after her Dominic Cummings monologue, back in the COVID days
RE: Newsnight - Radio_man - 04-11-2023
Another article this weekend from The Guardian on the future of Newsnight
"But for some former fans of Newsnight, the time has come to bury the show, not to praise it. This weekend, the BBC’s increasingly centralised team of news reporters is nervously awaiting the diagnosis. Will the flagship late-night news analysis show on BBC Two live to fight another day, or is it to be fatally wounded by £5m cuts to its £8m budget?"
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/nov/04/is-this-the-end-of-newsnight-bbc-flagship-show-waits-to-hear-its-fate
RE: Newsnight - DTV - 04-11-2023
Have to agree with Dorothy Byrne - I'd much rather they just axed it outright than turned it into yet another show built around tedious panel discussions. Better to reinvest the meagre savings elsewhere than waste it on a programme of borderline no value.
RE: Newsnight - Stockland Hillman - 04-11-2023
(04-11-2023, 08:03 PM)Radio_man Wrote: Another article this weekend from The Guardian on the future of Newsnight£8m? Katie Searl, the former BBC politics head said in the Telegraph the budget was £13m for an average of 300k viewers (21 September)
"But for some former fans of Newsnight, the time has come to bury the show, not to praise it. This weekend, the BBC’s increasingly centralised team of news reporters is nervously awaiting the diagnosis. Will the flagship late-night news analysis show on BBC Two live to fight another day, or is it to be fatally wounded by £5m cuts to its £8m budget?"
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/nov/04/is-this-the-end-of-newsnight-bbc-flagship-show-waits-to-hear-its-fate
For context, The Times reported STV News at 6 had a Scotland wide average reach of 382k. I guarantee you it doesn't have a £13m or an £8m budget for the entire news operation, let alone one show.
If the BBC think the show has value, then quantify it. Say its prepared to pay a premium of x to reach a specific audience or do a specific type of journalism or subject. Then it has an objective way of measuring outcomes.
RE: Newsnight - DTV - 04-11-2023
(04-11-2023, 08:20 PM)Stockland Hillman Wrote: £8m? Katie Searl, the former BBC politics head said in the Telegraph the budget was £13m for an average of 300k viewers (21 September)I believe that £13m figure was the budget before a prior round of cuts. £8m is the current budget.
For context, The Times reported STV News at 6 had a Scotland wide average reach of 382k. I guarantee you it doesn't have a £13m or an £8m budget for the entire news operation, let alone one show.
I would be very surprised if the figure for the STV News operation was substantially lower. The average BBC English region's TV operation costs around £5-8m and STV News' reported budget c2008 (when they were seeking licence subsidy) was around £7m with inflation of 40% since (with TV news costs having inflated above average). And, again, them having a similar budget wouldn't really surprise me given investigative and foreign reporting, a declining though still present part of Newsnight's remit, are more expensive than standard news reporting.
RE: Newsnight - JMT1985 - 04-11-2023
If Newsnight is axed, what is the point of BBC Two? They literally have no BBC 2 produced programmes apart from a few hours in the evening including Newsnight - they may as well shut the whole channel down if they start to axe core BBC 2 daily programming like this
RE: Newsnight - Stockland Hillman - 04-11-2023
(04-11-2023, 09:06 PM)DTV Wrote: I believe that £13m figure was the budget before a prior round of cuts. £8m is the current budget.
I would be very surprised if the figure for the STV News operation was substantially lower. The average BBC English region's TV operation costs around £5-8m and STV News' reported budget c2008 (when they were seeking licence subsidy) was around £7m with inflation of 40% since (with TV news costs having inflated above average). And, again, them having a similar budget wouldn't really surprise me given investigative and foreign reporting, a declining though still present part of Newsnight's remit, are more expensive than standard news reporting.
STV News is around £4.7 million in total in told (q3/21) I'm told by a fairly reliable analyst. They have had big cuts, lost a full edition and changed production staffing/automation since 08.
I'm genuinely interested to hear why you think news cost inflation is higher than average?
Everything ive seen suggests the opposite: studio production tech is cheaper, lower head counts, lower staff wages (as old school high earners retire) and things like contribution links are far lower - a liveU and a zoom is orders of magnitude cheaper than a sat truck
RE: Newsnight - DTV - 04-11-2023
(04-11-2023, 09:30 PM)Stockland Hillman Wrote: I'm genuinely interested to hear why you think news cost inflation is higher than average?Good to have a more up-to-date figure - a 50% real budget cut in 15 years is certainly something of an achievement for a similar level of functionality, even if certain production costs have fallen.
Everything ive seen suggests the opposite: studio production tech is cheaper, lower head counts, lower staff wages (as old school high earners retire) and things like contribution links are far lower - a liveU and a zoom is orders of magnitude cheaper than a sat truck
In terms of News struggling with inflation, I'm just going on the fact that both BBC News channels spent the last decade repeatedly attempting to cut costs - including significant staffing cuts, programming reductions, etc. - and ended up with little real savings (indeed, the BBC News channel's 2022/23 budget was higher in real terms than a decade earlier). Going by few publicly available figures (which are likely less reliable), Sky News also seem to have found it difficult to substantively reduce costs. Though, given the different cost structures involved in news channels, perhaps that's just particular to them - they are notoriously financial black holes, while bulletin news is much easier to do cheaply. It's just very hard to find comparable data for other BBC News programming as they rework the way data is published every few years.
RE: Newsnight - JMT1985 - 04-11-2023
What more can BBC News cost cut, until the point we get to either a terrible news service, or axing of other news bulletins - will the BBC News at One get axed, because in 2023, how many at lunchtime actually bother to watch news on TV during our lunch break?
US networks have never provided a networked national news programme at lunchtime, just a waste of money - maybe BBC One could axe the News at One and save cash there?
RE: Newsnight - Reith85 - 04-11-2023
(04-11-2023, 10:34 PM)JMT1985 Wrote: What more can BBC News cost cut, until the point we get to either a terrible news service, or axing of other news bulletins - will the BBC News at One get axed, because in 2023, how many at lunchtime actually bother to watch news on TV during our lunch break?
US networks have never provided a networked national news programme at lunchtime, just a waste of money - maybe BBC One could axe the News at One and save cash there?
BBC News at One on BBC One gets 2m viewers and a 40% share daily - it wins its slot by a very, very long distance against all channels at that time. And with 2m viewers on average for each edition, it is by far the most watched programme on any channel between 6am - 4pm on weekdays - and that isn't an exaggeration.