[Radio_man]

Of course we all would rather see a fully resourced news channel but I don't think there is anything unreasonable in the suggestion simulcasting PM would be of more value than a 5 Live phone in, and at a time of day when news isn't really breaking in the way it does in the morning.

But the point is that if I want to listen to the radio, I'll go and do that. I don't expect to tune into a TV news channel to find instead I'm watching a radio show. 

As has been said, there's no radio simulcasts on the global channel and it would be good if UK viewers had access to the full global channel so if you don't wanto watch a radio show you can watch actual TV news from the BBC.
It can't be difficult for the full global channel, with trailers instead of adverts, to be put on iPlayer as BBC News (Global).

[Brekkie]

But the point is that if I want to listen to the radio, I'll go and do that. I don't expect to tune into a TV news channel to find instead I'm watching a radio show. 

The point is though the current channel isn't scheduled around what the viewer may want through the day.  It shouldn't be the case but sadly is.   

Would be interesting to know what an hour of Rafio 4 or 5Live news costs in comparison to an hour of news channel content.

[kookaburra]

The point is though the current channel isn't scheduled around what the viewer may want through the day.  It shouldn't be the case but sadly is.   

Nor is it reflective of the news cycle. 9am-midday is the busiest time for announcements, developing news, etc. That’s exactly when you want a rolling channel. But the NC has had this blind spot going back to Victoria Derbyshire.

[Radio_man]

Nor is it reflective of the news cycle. 9am-midday is the busiest time for announcements, developing news, etc. That’s exactly when you want a rolling channel. But the NC has had this blind spot going back to Victoria Derbyshire.

It's unbelievable to think now, that when the rebranded BBC News Channel replaced BBC News 24 in April 2008, it decided to break away from Breakfast at 8:30am every weekday morning, and there were two double headed presenter morning shifts before lunchtime.
Then something happened around 2015, a change of management perhaps (and by then we'd had 5 years of austerity driven by the coalition government, including the freezing of the license fee), and suddenly mornings were classed as not important for providing coverage of developing news and fair game for cuts.

[Andrew]

It's unbelievable to think now, that when the rebranded BBC News Channel replaced BBC News 24 in April 2008, it decided to break away from Breakfast at 8:30am every weekday morning, and there were two double headed presenter morning shifts before lunchtime.
Then something happened around 2015, a change of management perhaps (and by then we'd had 5 years of austerity driven by the coalition government, including the freezing of the license fee), and suddenly mornings were classed as not important for providing coverage of developing news and fair game for cuts.

Was “Victoria Derbyshire” a cut? A specially made separate programme with high(ish) profile host, specially made “films” etc. Compared with just a standard hour of rolling news

[DTV]

But the point is that if I want to listen to the radio, I'll go and do that.

But that isn't true of a lot of viewers. A sizeable proportion of the people who have watched visualised Nicky Campbell will be people who wouldn't have tuned into it on 5 Live. Regardless of the presentational merits of it, visualised radio typically expands audiences rather than splits them.

Was “Victoria Derbyshire” a cut? A specially made separate programme with high(ish) profile host, specially made “films” etc. Compared with just a standard hour of rolling news

Yes and no. It was obviously extra investment in the slot, but I believe it might have been a BBC Two idea first which then got quickly rolled onto the News channel as they saw it as a way to trim costs (although, always worth stressing that the NC consistently saw below average cuts). VD did get better at covering developing news later, particularly once reduced to an hour, but it was ultimately a retilting of the whole morning schedule towards more appointment-to-view programmes because, while it might be true that is when most UK news develops, it was never a high-performing slot for the channel.

[Stuart]

Was “Victoria Derbyshire” a cut? A specially made separate programme with high(ish) profile host, specially made “films” etc. Compared with just a standard hour of rolling news

At the time the BBC said it was part of cuts, but that the filmed reports would continue to be made and shown elsewehere. So I'm not sure what the saving would be. It was all overtaken by COVID anyway so I guess that part was quietly shelved.

As others have also said, I would much rather just have the global feed in the morning rather than the needless visualisation of someone talking into a radio mic. If I want to listen to a radio programme I'll use the intended medium.

[DTV]

it was never a high-performing slot for the channel.

Very tangential, but as discussions about the relative performance of different slots is a semi-regular discussion on here, I thought I'd attempt to visualise it so there is a reference for future discussions. This shows how often each slot appeared in the channel's weekly top 10 across the final year for which BARB published BBC News channel top 10s (September 2017-September 2018, though I've removed the Christmas period).


Most consistently high-performing slots were Sunday mornings, Saturdays at 18:00 and The Film Review. Across the week, 17:00, 18:00, 21:00 and 22:00 hours tended to rate the best. Of course, the data is now over five years old, but I would suspect the general trends remain. Also of note is how frequently World News America would crop up in top 10s during the few weeks of the year it would appear due timezone disalignment - suggesting it had something of a draw for UK viewers.

[Brekkie]

Just shows viewers can find content elsewhere when it isn't on BBC1, though surprising actually they don't bump Breakfast over to BBC2 on Sundays when MOTD is usually happens should the slot on other days be filled with live sport. Presumably there is some contractual obligation for the MOTD repeat to usually be on BBC1 rather than scheduling that on BBC2.

On weekdays it probably should be the 5pm and 9pm hour they're concentrating on. Obviously the schedule had already changed a bit since 2018 anyway with Outside Source moving earlier, so be interesting to see if it was the format or the time slot which bought in the viewers there. I do think a straight BBC World News bulletin in the 9pm hour would probably be preferential to The Context - appeal to viewers who want detailed news from the BBC but maybe in more depth than the 10pm bulletin, or just don't want to stay up to watch it.

[DTV]

On weekdays it probably should be the 5pm and 9pm hour they're concentrating on.  Obviously the schedule had already changed a bit since 2018 anyway with Outside Source moving earlier, so be interesting to see if it was the format or the time slot which bought in the viewers there.    I do think a straight BBC World News bulletin in the 9pm hour would probably be preferential to The Context - appeal to viewers who want detailed news from the BBC but maybe in more depth than the 10pm bulletin, or just don't want to stay up to watch it.

Certainly, the lack of a World News Today-style structured international news bulletin is one of many missed opportunities/bizarre decisions on the new channel - was something the BBC did really well and there is clearly a market for something global in that slot (it never rated especially well before Outside Source - so that was clearly doing something right, even if a lot of people on here did think Mk1 OS was gimmicky). If Yalda Hakim's new Sky programme is a proper world news hour, they've also likely ceded ground there.

17:00 hour you've got a bit more wriggle room for UK news as you're out of Asia-Pacific peak and coming to the end of South Asia peak, plus World opt-out at 17:30 for Focus on Africa. To be fair, they do generally use that half-hour for domestic news, but, obviously, constrained by the torpid format.

I'd also note that the best performing non-news programmes in 2018 were The Film Review (axed), The Papers (axed) and Dateline London (axed), while Sportsday and Newswatch, which both remain, were never particularly strong performers. Again, odd decisions - though there could be rights issues around films, culture was always a big part of World News, so something could have worked there; the Papers could have been widened to included international press (as per 05:45 review) and it's not like the new channel is against talking about the news rather than reporting it; and Dateline London was fairly well respected internationally. But, then again, I suspect this is emblematic of the channel's leaders not really knowing what they want to do/should be doing.