[DTV]

I am a bit surprised we don’t know where Ben Brown and Annita McVeigh are going, but no doubt we will find out very soon!

Would be a shame for Ben Brown not to at least pop up on the first day - he has the distinction of being a reporter on the first ever BBC WSTV News bulletin (along with George Alagiah) and being the first DtL report on News 24.

I don’t think the bbc internally really supported news 24 it was very much an experiment you can tell from day one it was reliant on bbc world programmes and some bulletins albeit it was arms length back then and with that in mind it did always feel like to myself that If any bbc news service should it disappear it would be the now news channel, so it’s not really surprising the presenters who have been kept on are bbc world news ones.

There were certainly some who were wary of the investment in both News 24 and BBC News Online at the time, but I'm not sure it's really accurate to say that it wasn't supported by executives. It was very heavily promoted from day one and, despite a lot of early struggles, they persisted with it, which they didn't with the other early digital channels. Even in recent years the channel has done relatively well - with proportionally the lowest real-term cuts of any TV channel or radio station. It's certainly not what it was, but I wouldn't say it has been unfairly treated.

Also News 24 didn't really have much overlap with World at the start - Europe Direct was the only shared live news programming at launch, with HARDtalk and USA Direct as the only other shared daily programming. Even a lot of weekend back-half programming was separate to start with.