[justinh]

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.

There seem to be too many contradictions at the moment, if there is major breaking news Nicky Campbell will often drop the phone in to cover it, and they increasingly seem to be dropping in appropriate b-roll etc. In which case why opt out to the news room at all? Same with world news, when it’s covering the same story it seems to do it with more flair/production value anyway…

Yes. I think to a certain degree - this stuff is impossible to avoid when you're trying to operate an opt-out system for developing news that you can't predict the direction of. That said, it has been clumsy in the past month, surely this is stuff you can at least try to prep for a bit with rehearsed fake scenarios and the like? At the very least, find smarter ways to crash in/out of the World feed. 

As for Nicky Campbell, having him compromise his 5Live show to make it somewhat work for TV is a bit daft. Down the same lines of having a dual news agenda. What imagined audience are you serving? People who tune in to watch breaking news aren't going to be satisfied with watching a radio show on TV.