[Newshound47]

As predicted, it does seem very much like the entirety of the weekends are now simulcast from C. So, at present, it's only 0900-1800 Mon-Fri along with the network weekend bulletins coming from E. Sad times.

We have returned, however, to weekend bulletins now being non-News channel for the first time in fifteen years. Which means that they've got a separate presenter and gallery team in - why don't they try using them?

This step up in transition, combined with the overly UK-leaning running orders of the simulcasts, has really destroyed any hope I have that this merger is going to go well. It just doesn't seem like they're going to take any of the sensible routes to maintain some degree of separate UK output and not contaminate their World output with internationally meaningless UK stories. And there are many routes that allow them to do this while still making necessary cuts.

I could sort of forgive this if they were going down the international news channel route and wholly embracing it, but it's becoming clear that it'll be a schedule of 10am-style smudges - too much UK news for an international audience, too little UK news for a domestic one. Not just is such a running order not in either audience's interest, it weakens World's output and thus potentially imperils its profitability (which would lead to no BBC News channels full stop).

There was a way this merger could have gone well and worked for both audienes, but they seem really determined to blow it. Just an utter waste.

I suspect in time World News will end up with the national bulletins airing sometimes on it.