[LDN]

It seems that we've seen the last of the 'full-fat' breaking news lower-thirds, with two lines of text, and with the small, flashing white-backed 'BREAKING' tag to the right of the BBC News logo - i.e. this version: 

   

With the decision to ditch the second descriptive line of text on all lower-thirds, the breaking news version now just scrolls endlessly between all-caps large Reith Bold 'BREAKING' and the mixed-case Reith Serif headline.

I assume the decision to drop the second line of text is a consequence of the leaner staffing operation for the new combined channel; in particular, the challenge of reliably maintaining text for two completely different stories, on those occasions when the UK opts out for its own coverage. Instead of rising to that challenge to maintain the usefulness of the on-screen graphics, as well as continuing to - at the very least - meet the same standards of output provided by the previous two channels, someone evidently decided it would just be much easier to ditch the second line of text entirely, thereby stripping the lower-thirds of most of their usefulness.

So now, we have a large headline graphic on screen both before and during (?!) a story, taking up space to tell us nothing more than the same four- or five-word story title. Who is that helping? How does having that headline on screen for four or five minutes enhance my understanding of the story? How is that better than the more complete story summary I could rely on from the on-screen graphics on the previous channels?  

Previously, I could jump over to the BBC News Channel, and even mid-bulletin, mid-story, I could get a scrolling text summary (in addition to the headline) of the story that was currently being discussed, so I could catch up with the key details related to what was happening on-screen. Additionally, I'd be able to get a quick overview of the day's key stories via the ticker. 

Now, if I've missed any part of a report/package when I switch over to BBC News, I have no idea what the hell's going on, beyond the story headline. There's a good chance I might find myself in the middle of a lengthy 3- or 4-way talking-heads discussion about a news story, but there's nothing on screen to tell me what these people are talking about for five or ten minutes, aside from the ever-present headline; nothing more to bring me up to speed with the key elements of the story. And instead of a useful ticker, all I've got is a static web address -- taking up space, and seemingly begging me to stop wasting my time on the TV channel, and just read the damn website already.

None of this is an improvement, for anybody. All of this is worse than what came before.