[DTV]

Can't they just do what they used to do on overnights - have the presenter read a few UK stories while World is on break?? And give us a proper ident with music into and out of a break, back!  The current set up is a mess for both feeds.

Exactly, they used to be very good at opting in during overnights - something they did for almost exactly 25 years (I believe joint overnights began at the end of March 1998).

That said, both channels have had issues with these kinds of things at times. News 24 in its early days was infamous for its frequent faults - I wonder if opts were one of them and that is why they changed the format of Europe Direct (the only launch simulcast) after a few months*. World did also have that patch in the mid-2000s when they altered how ad breaks worked, which led to network opts messing up constantly - but that was a playout/communication issue rather than news production issue.

* Initially, Europe Direct was a live simulcast on both channels - it had a joint opening, then went to separate news bulletins for about ten minutes, before the rest of the hour continued together - with World opting out at ad points. After a few months, World stopped taking it live and took it on edited delay an hour after, no longer with an integrated news bulletin.