[simon]

Visualising the Today programme (with or without BSL) might be a better idea for the News Channel.

Usually Today is the programme sets the day’s agenda and it has more interviews and soundbites quoted by news organisations compared with Breakfast.

And at least it will provide an alternative.

Today is full of packages. What would you show in those slots?

Radio packages seem to predominantly be reversioned TV packages these days, with some of the more obvious visual references removed.

They could just fully embrace this and deliver the radio version with visuals as well, but cut to be more suitable for radio (no "as you can see here", no background audio from cutaway shots...)

Today could then play in the video version for their visualised output and it would still work well for radio.

RTE actually do what Frances was describing - on RTE One you get Today (their TV breakfast programme), and on RTE News you get a visualised version of Morning Ireland which is RTE Radio One's breakfast programme. Last time I looked at it they just had a wide shot of the studio during recorded elements.

It's worth noting that, although never popular on here, simulcast BBC One bulletins do tend to rate above average on the News channel. I don't know why - I assume that people are just used to the news being at that time, or maybe do switch over for Sportsday.

I imagine it's because there are a number of people who know that the One, Six and Ten are different to the regular rolling news output, make a point of tuning in to watch those bulletins, but just default to tuning in to the News Channel because, well, that's where they expect to find the BBC News.

Although I do get the argument that you could give people more choice, I think for many more casual viewers they simply might not expect the BBC to be producing more than one TV news programme at a time and be confused if they turn on the BBC's dedicated news channel and find something other than the BBC's flagship news bulletin.