[lookoutwales]

Yes, national opt-outs for all three nations were launched in October 1999, opting out at the TOTH news summary that Newsnight then did. Not sure whether the Scottish opt originally had the same format and was only extended to the full 20 minutes later, but the Welsh and Northern Irish opts were only around 7 minutes and usually only contained a news summary and a single item before opting back in to the main programme.

Newsnight Scotland launched as a 20-minute programme on Monday - Thursdays, but also ran a seven-minute version more akin to the Wales and NI opts on Fridays for a while before that was dropped (there was an example of the Friday edition with John Milne, but can't seem to find it)

From a Welsh point-of-view, it felt like BBC Wales were trying and struggling with no end of numerous formats for late news in the space of a few years, especially with digital TV getting underway.

- Wales at Eleven - way too short to offer any in-depth coverage beyond one story
- Choice News at Ten - probably reaching a minuscule audience at best, latterly replaced by...
- 2W News and Sport - concise 15-minute effort at 9pm, but axed in favour of...
- Wales Today on 2W - usually scheduled too close to the 10pm news on BBC1 to work, heavily weighted in favour of more sports news

On top of that - and Wales Today being extended upon the Nine's move to Ten - BBC1's duty announcer-director still read (OOV) a 'closedown' news summary before handing over to News 24 overnight as late as 2002 (something the other Nations had long dropped)