[Radio_man]

Here's an interesting article on the BBC's current woes from the New Statesman. There's also a couple of paragraphs on the World & NC merger, that I've quoted below.

www.newstatesman.com 

The merger of the news channels has caused the most upset, as more than a dozen established presenters have vied for five jobs. “The mood among the two teams is on the floor,” said one BBC insider. “People who’ve worked there for decades have never known it to feel bleaker.” The interview process included screen tests in which presenters were filmed in a clip studio, likened by one source to a “broom cupboard”, and tested on their ability to deal with breaking news while operating an autocue with a foot pedal. One source described it as a “sham” and “unrealistic”, as well as a strange way to judge people who have been presenting live news for years. Another said that staff on the BBC News channel felt “devastated and gaslit” after most of the presenter roles went to World News journalists. What was presented as a merger felt more like a closure of the domestic channel. The same source suggested the target audience of the newly combined news channel would be wealthy people living outside the UK. “Where does this leave the UK audience who want to have the tax affairs of Nadhim Zahawi and the interference of Richard Sharp properly interrogated?” they said. “The UK taxpayer is being f***ed over, frankly.”

One BBC television news insider said: “We are handing the audience to our competitors on a plate. You only have to look at the viewing figures for late evening now that we’ve got rid of the newspaper review – they have collapsed.” Sky News has had a ratings boost for its rival paper review on weekday nights. GB News, the upstart right-wing news channel, is also making gains. Figures from Barb, which measures TV audiences, shared with the New Statesman show that the average prime-time audience gap between the BBC News channel and GB News was more than 100,000 in January 2022. Last month that gap had narrowed to 40,000. News Corp’s TalkTV, meanwhile, has landed headline-generating interviews with Cristiano Ronaldo, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson.

Regarding 'The Papers', I always wondered why Christian Fraser or whoever is presenting 'The Context' couldn't stay on to do it for the NC - just axing it altogether when it was clearly a popular part of the NC evening schedule was very short sighted, and now the NC's competitors are benefiting as a result.