[justinh]

The issue with the opt-outs as others have pointed out is that once a decision is made to opt-out, the opt-out sticks with the story. Whilst on a more 'natural' news channel if the story doesn't warrant wall-to-wall coverage (or if there's not enough info to stick with it with rolling coverage yet), they'll go back to some other stories and check back in from time to time especially if there are new developments. Opting in and out repeatedly is something that would be messy (CNNi does that sometimes with CNN and you often end up crashing in halfway through an interview), so naturally the other solution would be to run some other stories in the meantime. The issue is, there doesn't seem to be a bank of reports sitting around which could be used to sustain the opt-out because the content is more live interview-driven (and you can't just clone a contributor who's speaking on the international feed to also be speaking to the opt-out too).

This is an issue, but only for people treating the channel as a more appointment-viewing type arrangement. This is a tricky balance since you might displace some of that audience if you end up covering nothing for an hour. But it works fine for the breaking news audience. For those people, the idea likely goes that they're watching live news to see something live happening - even if that thing gets delayed. If they want a headlines round-up of stories or a news channel, then they'll be checking the news on their phone. The crux of the issue is still that they're talking to two different audiences with the product.