[DTV]

An unpopular opinion here no doubt, but since this 'merger' was announced and it became clear that World News would undoubtedly win out over the domestic NC, I've been of the view that the NC should just be replaced in the UK with the full World News channel. And by full - I mean ALL of it. So UK viewers would get what viewers in the Republic of Ireland and across Europe get. No opts for Breakfast, the 1, 6 & 10 or Nicky Campbell (roll eyes).

I’d agree with this - but I’d still keep the ability to do UK opts for National breaking news.

Yeah, I don't think it's best to return to breaking into One or Two, especially as the kinds of news stories that the opt would cover are far more frequent than the kinds of story that would once have received a network news flash. However, I do think there is room to have a bit more UK news on the channel than World previously did. So long as you don't end up with UK news unduly dominating, there are certain types of UK story (major political stories, royal stories, and finallys) that can easily be integrated into the main body of bulletins and I think that an hourly 3/4 minute UK News segment could be used to round up other domestic news stories in a way that doesn't become overly intrusive for the world audience.

One thing I have noted across the first few days is just how erratic the UK-World balance is between shifts. I assume that this partly down to some hours being produced by former NC teams and some by ex-World teams, but it is very odd to have a situation where some are nearly as UK news heavy as an old News channel hour and some that are nearly all international news. While I'm sure that a more stable and reasonable balance will be found once the new channel launches, it's just odd to lurch from one extreme to the other every few hours. I'd've assumed that a compromise smudge would have been agreed across all shifts for the interim period.