[interestednovice]

Those are the two horses that the BBC are simultaneously attempting to ride!

For BBC World News viewers: nothing is changing, just a cool new name, we are going to be called “BBC News” from now on to match our website and app.

For BBC News Channel viewers: everything is changing, other than the name. The BBC are attempting to make viewers and Ofcom believe that the channel still exists and has not materially changed, despite the fact it has closed and could now best be described as a new regional variation of BBC World News (now the “new” BBC News channel).

The absolute average Joe, in the off the street sense, rarely watches the News Channel aside from serious or breaking news so will not notice anything. The “average” (non-pres geek) watching the News Channel a lot will start to notice something is up straight away, but the closure of the channel probably won’t dawn on them for a while. Whenever the full relaunch is, and they tune in of a morning expecting to see Annita McVeigh covering a good range of stories like they have done for years, but instead get Nicky Campbell asking Adrian from Leicester if he trusts politicians any more; that’s when the true extent of it will dawn on them!

Of course, at first you just think it’s “another shared hour” (normal people won’t know the word simulcast, but will recognise the “viewers in the UK and around the world” intro by now) but then eventually you notice that the shared hour has never ended. That’s when you realise it’s an eternal simulcast!

Similarly, for Word News viewers, the “BBC News” name, instead of BBC World News, has been phased in over almost a decade so the rebrand will initially appear low-key. After all, the golden rule always was that viewers in the UK might be allowed to believe that output was shared but were never allowed to hear the BBC World News name as a reference to the channel - so shared hours were always introduced as BBC News.

Outside Source broke ranks in it’s early days, as they used to make a big deal of how “if you’re watching in the UK on the BBC News Channel, coming up is the News at Ten with Huw Edwards - there he is getting ready; if you are watching around the world on BBC World News, it’s World News America”. They then had a brief discussion on an America-focused story with Katty Kay about what was coming up on said show.

Again, later on, 100 Days was simulcast on BBC Four, BBC World News and the BBC News Channel. BBC Four left the broadcast at half-past, so they would always say “coming up, for viewers on the BBC News Channel and BBC World News” ahead of that point. It was one of the few times that the NC was actually mentioned in preference to a BBC-number channel - usually the wording was inverted, such as in the example of BBC Two leaving a NC simulcast: it was always “goodbye to viewers on BBC Two”. BBC Four, I assumed, was deliberately not mentioned due to it potentially confusing BBC World News viewers.

Newsday also broke ranks with it’s intro, with a reference too. “This is BBC World News, live from London and Singapore, it’s Newsday”. Again, the sort-of excuse there was it was output from Singapore, so worked in a way as it was obvious “world news”.