[DTV]

That’s really interesting. I never knew there was a danger of World being closed. Any idea where I could find out more about that?

I know the World shifts were long (about 5 hours a piece and longer at weekends, were they not?) but it was very rigidly news at x:00 and programmes at :30, so I’d imagine the format was much less demanding on the presenter than the rolling style we have now?

I'm not sure how definite the threats of closure were, but there are a few discussions from that period back on the blue place that make clear that the loss-making status of the channel back then was obviously not sustainable - there was a lot of pressure for World to break into the highly profitable US market (I believe originally that it only had limited distribution around certain cities, as well as some PBS carriage). There was also a kerfuffle at one point about the 'fair' usage fees that BBC UK and BBC World paid each other to use the other's programmes - I believe some in govt were of the view that World were underpaying and News 24 were overpaying and thus the licence fee was unfairly subsidising the channel. This is also why you had things like BBC Four News produced by World and the 09:30 World News bulletin on News 24 - so UK could legitimately shift money to World.

I recall that the longest World shift they had was a seven-hour one at weekends, but that actually persisted long after the channel became profitable. But in the April 2000 - August 2001 period you had just four presenters across the day (06:00-01:00) in the week - including an afternoon six-hour shift. As you say, this was largely with half-an-hour on, half-an-hour off, but the afternoon shift still included doing the main edition of Asia Today.

The goal was always to get back to the focussed/stranded programmes (The World Today in the 90s; World News Today in the late-00s; GMT, Impact, etc. in 10s) for both editorial and financial reasons (as premium programmes, you can charge a higher advertising rate). Arguably, however, these programmes have shifted in recent years to being formatted a bit like a UK-news channel hour (more lives and interviews) - so perhaps the News channel can claim a victory there?