[interestednovice]

Yes, clearly a slightly-less-than-seamless opt is something most people wouldn’t even register, but we on a presentation forum notice it!

I just think it will be a shame if the technical quality of the output and/or the journalistic quality (space for analysis and explanation) is lost. Really I hoped that one reason for the merger of the channels was actually to preserve funds for that kind of quality, so we hopefully still get one high-quality channel instead of two bare-bones ones. I wouldn’t want there to be such a budget restriction that we lost proper analytical reports, for example.

Already, we are losing the immediacy of breaking news coverage from a true rolling-news channel. That may be a small price to pay, given wider cutbacks, but it will have an impact. Clearly, the whole idea of rolling news is that you already have a presenter “in the chair” and a crewed-up, live studio - so if and when something happens, you can react immediately. It’s all a bit BBC Three all over again to me, I just don’t see how it really adds up. Either the opt-outs will be slow to react or done on the cheap (self-opt autocue, limited producer and behind the scenes support, etc) so the output suffers journalistically, or they will have people “twiddling their thumbs” and hardly save any money vs having them on air? You still have the distribution cost of the channel; you still have the news gathering costs (largely for the bulletins on BBC One and World News, plus the website, anyway) and you still have to broadcast some UK news to keep Ofcom happy. Meanwhile, the risk of too much UK news “creeping in” to World output (à la CNN) risks making the channel less relevant and useful for the profitable World audience, so you could end up with less ad revenue to re-invest in UK services anyway. I can’t help feeling a terrible sense of dread that it isn’t going to work, despite my best efforts to be positive and wait to see it on air before casting judgement. Also, news is the core “point” of PSB broadcasting, so if you cannot do that what is the point. The BBC should have kept the channel and inflicted the cuts elsewhere. Even if they are left with only children’s, News and current affairs; those are the core elements of the broadcasting remit that commercial channels can’t/won’t do. It is the niche services that are actually the most important. If a smaller BBC is what we have to have, then something akin to PBS in America should be it - not something where there is money for popular entertainment on BBC One but no money for the News Channel.

As has been said in the thread, frequently people interested in news will see a push notification and then turn on the News Channel for context, analysis, explanation and reaction to that news. That’s an important role that I do hope they keep in mind for the opt-outs.

There have been some funny “inside joke”-type moments with the dodgy opts over time though. I remember at one stage, during Brexit proceedings in Parliament, Joanna Gosling was speaking to an MP on College Green and had to stop the interview, say “Coverage continues on the BBC News Channel, for now we say goodbye to viewers on BBC Two”, look down at her papers, look up again (obviously be told they still hadn’t opted), look down again, look up again and then smile and say “they’ve gone” before returning to her guest to resume the interview, apologising to them as she did so.

It was rather like the awkward BBC Breakfast opt posted here a few weeks back. Again, who decided that saying “Your watching BBC Breakfast, it’s 8:59” was a good way to close a programme? Some of this could go with some careful thinking on how to conduct the opt, and certainly it has been the case in the past that they didn’t like to acknowledge News Channel viewers.

Switching of feeds, the blank-countdown filler, and janky opts have at times made the News Channel feel a bit like a BBC Ringmain or secret clean-feed of studio output, not a public-facing service.

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As described above, I like the occasional janky opts (*shuffles papers*), but that's only cause I see it for what it is. Should they aim for better, yes. Do most folks care, no.

But as you say, I also think time to add context to the story/event is the key thing lost if capacity is reduced/airtime shared under pressure.

I mean the opts can't be messier than they were on BBC World around 2004 when they changed the way that the regions opted for breaks and consequently had several months of very dodgy opts.

With shared programming, the best way to opt-out is probably to incorporate stings or tags on at least one side of each World break - it's a little less awkward than the pause. For breaking news opts, I think you definitely need to opt-out with a sting - I feel it makes cutting somebody off mid-sentence a bit cleaner (a sort of presentational guilotine) than switching immediately to a presenter. When it comes to opting back in to the main stream, probably best to wait until the next World break, having the opt presenter recap/analyse in the meantime, then start the next joint section with a headline recap.

Agreed, or at least (if resources don’t allow going up to the next World break) some sort of American-style “we join this programme already in progress” announcement/sting.