[justinh]

I’m not a fan of the ‘Around the UK’ segments and would much rather it was just a quick read-through of a few UK stories. If the UK opt presenter is going to be on hand all day anyway, then they may as well go back to what they did twenty years ago and do the handover from the ‘World’ presenter to the UK presenter for a moment or two. The quarter past/quarter to breaks are only 1 minute long at the moment though so would probably need extending to two minutes to make it worthwhile - otherwise you’ve only really got time to summarise a few stories.

There have been more UK opts than I expected and they seem decently resourced (apart from the studio/set leaving something to be desired), but I don’t think they quite work at the moment. I know they’ve spoken about wanting to do single story streams for iPlayer and that the UK opts are one and the same, but when the UK opts out now it means that a story will get blanket coverage until the end of the opt. This often comes across as overkill, especially when things are delayed and they run out of things to talk about! Restructuring those opts so that, if needs be, they can take a breather for a round-up of other UK news, the odd weather forecast etc, would be a big improvement.

The hybrid agenda of this service continues to baffle me.

Sky News is now clearly the only proper UK TV news channel left (no, GB News doesn't count). If you go to get a quick TV wrap of the news from the BBC, then you're most likely getting a World News bulletin with a UK story tacked on. Who knows, maybe some people might like that?

The UK breaking opts make sense to a degree. Viewership of news channels can be very breaking news-driven (far from appointment viewing), and the BBC still wants to hold that audience. Makes sense from an online perspective too. My only thought is that the cost savings must really have come from hugely stripping out producing/tech staff, because implementing austerity measures by paying a standby presenter to twiddle their thumbs all day waiting for breaking news seems a bit daft.

Call the channel BBC News - it's the home of the BBC's news output on television that you can't find anywhere else (at least in the UK). Retain the BBC World News brand globally - the BBC still has enough left in the tank to produce a high-quality global-facing news channel, I think.

Dump the UK/World agenda bulletins and simulcast world bulletins as "BBC World News" - if someone wants to watch a UK news bulletin, they'll be headed to Sky News anyways.

Dump the 1/6/10/Newsnight simulcasts. If we're desperately in need of television wayfinding and doubt people can use the Freeview Guide, then create a programme menu during the programme breaks that signposts where you can find stuff. Who knows, maybe you can even use that strip of white at the bottom of the screen for something useful rather than just a URL.

Keep Nicky Campbell. Seems to work fine. Just work out how to incorporate UK opts better in case of breaking news.

Bring in programmes like The Nine that otherwise don't air anywhere else anyways. We're trying to save money here aren't we?

Just some ideas, but it's not an easy issue to fix. Figuring all this out is figuring out what the imagined audience and what the future of the channel will ultimately be.