[Charles]

How often do local cable and satellite systems take the ad break opt-outs on World? I’m watching on Comcast in the U.S., and I keep seeing more of the main “around the UK” segments rather than ads.

They really need to drop these “Around the UK” and “Meet the presenters” segments that appear in the middle of bulletins. They come out of nowhere and are so short that they don’t feel like programming breaks, yet they also aren’t integrated into the bulletins. They’re not serving anybody. The regional stories they’ve chosen are all evergreen stories, so it’s not like viewers in the UK are really getting anything of news value through them. I’m watching The Context right now, and after a fairly long first block of live coverage of the Good Friday Agreement anniversary, they run one of these segments on mental health in Welsh schools, then back to the bulletin with coverage of a shooting in Tel Aviv. Completely disjointed.

They really should just go back to doing those “In Brief” segments with three OOV UK stories like what they used to do during joint bulletins.