[DTV]

That's a shame. I don't care for the views of their zoomed guests. This sort of programming, like the endless newspaper reviews the UK seems to be in love with, is such cheap filler for proper news.

Agreed, though it's not actually cheap as some people might think. Appearance fees will run into several hundred pounds per person per edition - all adds up when you're doing it nearly every day. Even if The Context are paying guests as little as £200 (I expect it'd be higher), that's nearly £100k a year for one programme.

Though, to be honest, if you can shove all the pundit interviews into a single slot, I'd prefer that over them cropping up constantly throughout the day. It's become a real crutch on both channels in the last few years - some half-hours nearly every story seems to go to at least one 3/4-minute outside interview. I'd be fine with maybe a few across the day, but there's so many and it has a real slowing effect on the pace of the programmes.

20 years ago, News 24 used to fit 15-18 stories in the front half-hour, even if just in brief. Sometimes today, even on fairly slow news days, you get half-hours where only three or four stories are covered at all. And when it's that sluggish, I just turn off. Ideally, you'd have the happy medium between the two extremes that you had about ten years ago - a decent number of stories, with analysis on the main ones (ideally from BBC correspondents and experts, rather than from pundits).

Hopefully, the 'more updates' in yesterday's article refers to a slightly pacier format. Ideally, they'd also reformat The Context to include some actual decent explainer segments (as per Outside Source) - you know, to actually give some context.