[NickyS]

Anyone seen this before? Was ahead of the live feed of the Laura K prog on the BBC News website. Only a grab from the feed but the circles pulse.

[DTV]

If nothing else, trimming the network team would save money and further help the BBC defend its spending in the midst of a cost of living crisis. One quick look at the salary list will show the number of regular network presenters who are on over 100k.

As you identify, it's a move that would have a good PR angle; however, it's not one that will save a substantive amount of money. The network news budget is likely somewhere in the region of £50-70m (based on where it was 15 years ago, inflation and the fact it has been ringfenced) and the total presenter spend (including Breakfast) is between £2.5-3m (depending on how you count part-timers like Bruce and Husain). At most, that's about 6% of the network news budget. 

Losing Alagiah and de facto losing Edwards does trim that down a bit (by £770k, to about 4.5% at most), but that increases the number of slots that need to be filled by other presenters - any saving is going to be somewhat deadened by others filling that void and taking on extra responsibilities (not to mention, likely overtime payments for working more than contracted in the interim).

I think the five main presenters (Raworth, Myrie, Chakrabarti, Brown and Hill) and three occasionals (Bruce, Husain, Daheley) are likely enough to work for now, but I would say it'd actually be better to think about adding an extra main presenter at some point - the team is not especially young (at least one presenter is eligible for retirement in the next few years), so getting some new blood in somewhen would be sensible.

[coldiceattk]

Anyone seen this before? Was ahead of the live feed of the Laura K prog on the BBC News website. Only a grab from the feed but the circles pulse.

Gosh, we now have BBC Olive!

[Spencer]

Anyone seen this before? Was ahead of the live feed of the Laura K prog on the BBC News website. Only a grab from the feed but the circles pulse.

Nice to see that BBC Olive is alive and well.

[Edit: coldiceattk beat me to it.]

[harshy]

I’ve seen a new set of titles on the global feed I think I was called The Weeks Markets, it was just a lot of circles and yes it was very red as well.

[Andrew]

If nothing else, trimming the network team would save money and further help the BBC defend its spending in the midst of a cost of living crisis. One quick look at the salary list will show the number of regular network presenters who are on over 100k.

I’m not massively sure how you would trim down the network team. We’ve already seen this summer Reeta and Clive appearing practically every day including weekends, and due to the absence of Huw will probably continue to do so in September

Also i’m sure Fiona doesn’t get a full time salary for doing one bulletin a week. If she left the news team her payment would just transfer to someone else who would then be contracted to work one day more

[Richard H]

Have to agree with everyone else regarding the new look Newswatch. Its never been the most exciting title sequence or branding but at least it showed us what the programme was about. This time they really could not have come up with something worse if they tried

I like the idea of the radar keeping an eye on the news but the execution is just so bland. How did someone see this and say ok lets go with that. what the hell did the other ideas look like?

Years ago mockers on various forums would have spent weeks maybe months perfecting a recreation of the various BBC News titles and intros for different strands and now most of us could recreate these new merged channel intros in 30 mins and I'm being very generous here

Please don't destroy the click intro next. it actually has some movement and design to it which is timed well with the music.

[thePineapple]

As you identify, it's a move that would have a good PR angle; however, it's not one that will save a substantive amount of money.

You're right, but I'm pretty sure Dateline London had a ludicrously small budget (~£75k iirc), and those savings wouldn't be *too* hard to make up if a number of high profile faces took a pay cut.

That being said, I don't think reducing the network team is a good idea, and I don't think they deserve a pay cut - it's just one way the awful situation that the BBC's been put in could be eased.

[DTV]

You're right, but I'm pretty sure Dateline London had a ludicrously small budget (~£75k iirc), and those savings wouldn't be *too* hard to make up if a number of high profile faces took a pay cut.

That is true, but I suspect Dateline London was axed for more than budgetary reasons (being basically a rounding error on a spreadsheet). Given the format of the new channel, an extra news discussion programme was probably viewed as superfluous and, in terms of filming, it'd probably have been logistically harder to fit in.

[ginnyfan]

Weekends on World used to be special. Lots of interesting programs, first of all Dateline London, but also great documentaries about history, society, nature, space etc plus many interesting weekly programs. News at the top of the hour usually done by a good mix of people. It didn't matter that sometimes it would be a 5 or 10 minute edition, they still gave us top news stories from all over the world and it was usually followed by a documentary.

These days, none of the above mention exist.