[cando]

Not sure how much we should be celebrating the BBC doing the minimum it promised and often in a much less dynamic way than Sky, which manages to handle multiple domestic breaking stories at once while the NC often seems tethered to just one issue.

It's almost as if it has a much higher budget 🤔. Come back when NBC's legal obligation to Sky's budget is over.

[Moz]

Not sure how much we should be celebrating the BBC doing the minimum it promised and often in a much less dynamic way than Sky, which manages to handle multiple domestic breaking stories at once while the NC often seems tethered to just one issue.

All I’m saying is that there were people on here who doubted they’d ever break away, or do it very infrequently. The truth is they seem to break away at least daily.

Lots to improve but it’s better than we were expecting.

[freeaxe]

It's almost as if it has a much higher budget 🤔. Come back when NBC's legal obligation to Sky's budget is over.

Surely BBC News' budget is a vast, order of magnitude higher than Sky News?

[AndrewP]

A new China unit was announced today in the Radio Theatre as part of "BBC World Service presents...":
www.bbc.com 

BBC World Service Launches New Global China Unit
The team will produce a range of original journalism that will be available on t…
  Source: www.bbc.com

They've already released their first article:
www.bbc.co.uk 

Tensions grow as China ramps up global mining for green tech - BBC News
China has taken big stakes in mines across the world extracting minerals vital t…
  Source: www.bbc.co.uk

[what]

How about they start spending more of their news budget in the UK? They are the British Broadcasting Corporation. But their UK news provision is getting frankly embarrassing.

[all new phil]

How about they start spending more of their news budget in the UK? They are the British Broadcasting Corporation. But their UK news provision is getting frankly embarrassing.

I’m reasonably certain the BBC spend a substantial amount of money covering news here in the UK.

[bbctvtechop]

All I’m saying is that there were people on here who doubted they’d ever break away, or do it very infrequently. The truth is they seem to break away at least daily.

BiB - Almost as if they could justify having a permanent opt. They could even call it a channel.......

[Moz]

BiB - Almost as if they could justify having a permanent opt. They could even call it a channel.......

I don’t know what BiB means.

Disagree with your point though. Surely it’s a lot cheaper having a break out service than a separate channel.

And I know people have raised the point of “if you’re paying them to stand by anyway you might as well pay them to be on air” - but I don’t buy this argument. My work had an on call service - we were paid a smaller sum for being on call but only got paid for working if we were called out.

[bbctvtechop]

I don’t know what BiB means.

Disagree with your point though. Surely it’s a lot cheaper having a break out service than a separate channel.

And I know people have raised the point of “if you’re paying them to stand by anyway you might as well pay them to be on air” - but I don’t buy this argument. My work had an on call service - we were paid a smaller sum for being on call but only got paid for working if we were called out.

BiB = "Bit in Bold"

I hear what you're saying. But you also said "They break away at least daily". So, if they were operating the same method as your "on call" example, then there's no money being saved anyway as the call out happens multiple times a day.

Except that on call method absolutely wouldn't work in broadcasting. For one thing, I suspect in your example the staff were otherwise sitting at home, and there was a realistic expectation of some travel/response time (2 hours, say) to get to the office or to a client. That clearly cannot happen in news broadcasting. The staff member has to be in the office/newsroom ready to go with literally seconds' notice.

Secondly, it's not just the presenter. You need a crew, however minimal, and a studio which is maintained and in go mode at all times.

You could argue that when they're not presenting they can be contributing to the general journalistic research. Great. Who does that when they are presenting? Do they then have a journalist on standby for when that happens? A journalist who needs paying to be in the office regardless of whether they are needed or not? You can keep this argument going in circles. And, that's only the presenters/journalists. What are the standby technical crew doing while there's no need to opt? Sitting in an empty, but ready to go, studio waiting for something to happen? They may as well be on air in that studio producing a non stop UK opt...

...or a News Channel.

[Moz]

You could argue that when they're not presenting they can be contributing to the general journalistic research. Great. Who does that when they are presenting? Do they then have a journalist on standby for when that happens? A journalist who needs paying to be in the office regardless of whether they are needed or not? You can keep this argument going in circles. And, that's only the presenters/journalists. What are the standby technical crew doing while there's no need to opt? Sitting in an empty, but ready to go, studio waiting for something to happen? They may as well be on air in that studio producing a non stop UK opt...

You’ll know more about this than I do, but I’d wager that not all general journalistic research gets on air. Even less so when there’s a breaking news story rolling for hours.

So when they’re needed to present, they present. When they’re not needed they do general journalism to make lots of little stories needed more when there isn’t a single big story.

As for tech staff - surely a locked off camera on a balcony can be handled by the same gallery that’s working the World stream?