[Independent]

BBC News are claiming to be live with the Gwyneth Paltrow testimony but in fact they are about a minute behind what Sky News are showing.

It would be better if the BBC carried it an hour behind and just only a few short portions of it. Near the end of each bulletin.

I suspect it’s considered of interest to WN viewers, at least.

Maybe. But I doubt it is for most WN viewers.

[interestednovice]

BBC World News is very US-focused, so it probably is of relevance. It’s definitely not of much British relevance, however. I suspect Sky News would have dropped it if something newsworthy happened here, but the BBC would have been reluctant to.

The 11:15am opt-out is a sore point of mine. Regularly, at around that time, the BBC News channel has done the headlines and a report, then goes into an interview. Invariably, the quarter-past-the-hour headlines are dropped from the running order. So there is no clean place to opt, it makes the whole thing very awkward and disrupts the flow of interviews.

[Kojak]

BBC News are claiming to be live with the Gwyneth Paltrow testimony but in fact they are about a minute behind what Sky News are showing.

Were you watching on TV or online? If the latter, I’ve noticed Sky’s online stream tends to have a shorter delay than the iPlayer - so it might actually have been to do with that.

[AJB39]

BBC News are claiming to be live with the Gwyneth Paltrow testimony but in fact they are about a minute behind what Sky News are showing.

Were you watching on TV or online? If the latter, I’ve noticed Sky’s online stream tends to have a shorter delay than the iPlayer - so it might actually have been to do with that.

I was watching on TV. BBC News did catch up later to live after a recess in the trial but for about half an hour they were a minute behind.

[all new phil]

I saw a particularly awkward opt out from the news channel on BBC Two earlier in the week just at the start of an interview, where the newsreader not only explained that viewers on BBC Two were about to leave but also decided they'd better explain to international viewers that BBC Two is a channel in the UK. Hopefully they can find a smoother way to manage this with the new setup.

The smoothest way would be to stop opting to things already on other channels in the first place. Surely someone has to make this common sense decision at some point.

[Newshound47]

Opting to those things is what will keep more of the public places that have BBC News on the Tv. The less they do that the more that will switch to Sky News.

[interestednovice]

That’s true - if domestic news is almost totally removed from the channel, many public places will not want to show it.

It’s an important consideration.

[Matrix]

That’s true - if domestic news is almost totally removed from the channel, many public places will not want to show it.

It’s an important consideration.

Is it? 

The last time I stood in a pub with BBC News on (with subtitles) I wasn’t exactly totting up the ratio of foreign to domestic stories. 

The reality is, unfortunately, that I doubt very many people beyond the newsroom—and this forum—will notice *too* much of a difference. 

‘News story? Yeah, put BBC News on’ is how I imagine the conversation will go.

[Former Member 237]

That’s true - if domestic news is almost totally removed from the channel, many public places will not want to show it.

It’s an important consideration.

Is it? 

The last time I stood in a pub with BBC News on (with subtitles) I wasn’t exactly totting up the ratio of foreign to domestic stories. 

The reality is, unfortunately, that I doubt very many people beyond the newsroom—and this forum—will notice *too* much of a difference. 

‘News story? Yeah, put BBC News on’ is how I imagine the conversation will go.

Yes this is the truth, most people may little attention to such things. They tune in when something big happens and maybe the news at 10, but apart from that, not really.

[interestednovice]

People will quickly start to notice if they “put BBC News on” and find that the big “news story” they were expecting is not covered at all!

That is exactly the kind of scenario I am envisaging if the channel is World-focused and not domestic (it’s usually big domestic stories where people do this).

However, I do believe that having a world focus, as opposed to a parochial UK focus padded out with radio filler, is the correct approach.

The BBC seem to be going for a totally undesirable fudge in the middle ground that pleases nobody, but disappoints everybody. Very badly handled in my view!

Really, the BBC should have been upfront about deciding to close the NC due to budgetary constraints (I think it’s arguable that cuts should have come elsewhere, but that’s another debate: the decision has been made) and simply broadcast BBC WN, unchanged, in the UK. There is no point to simulcasts at all and it is not a good idea to downgrade the profitable WN product - that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To make it clear that the channel was now distinctly WN, they should have kept the BBC WN name and used that “in the UK and around the World”, to use one of their phrases!