[Radio_man]

I think it's been said before that the branded programmes might exist for the benefit of advertisers. Regardless, their existence isn't detrimental to the schedule and it would be rather pointless to ditch them. I agree though, that they don't offer anything different than a generic bulletin and they could desperately do with being 'beefed up' both in terms of presentation and editorially.

I do think the channel was at its worst last April when nearly every hour was plain BBC News. It's come along quite a bit since moving back into Studio E at the start of this month.

Something as simple as unique theme music and different camera angles as well as a focus on specific regions would go a long way in improving them I think.

Isn't your last paragraph pretty much what was in place with the World News branded programmes pre-merger?
But the decision was taken to axe all of the UK daytime WN branded programmes and start from scratch. It's questionable whether the replacements are any better.