[LDN]

In my opinion, this is very, very weak.
ibb.co 

Flat, basic, bland, forgettable. As with other recent examples of BBC News design, it doesn't look like it's been designed at all; it looks like a basic template that came free with the software used to create it. 

Without the BBC logo... 

...there's little in the visual design that's at all distinctive, or easily recognisable as belonging to BBC News -- unlike, say, the globe, with its widely familiar elements like the animated pulses, and the cat's cradle. As a piece of branding, this is a step back from what came before. 

We even have exactly the same truncated theme music used elsewhere. Nothing in the aural branding to distinguish this "three hours of fast-moving news" from a regular TOTH bulletin. 

The stories and packages are the same too, with little evidence of News Now being any more "fast-moving" than any other hour. The studio looks the same as it usually does, with no programme branding. There's not even a tag/bug in the lower-thirds with the name of the programme. 

What is the purpose of having three hours of separately branded programming when the branding is so weak (and so briefly seen), and the structure and content of the programme differs so little to other hours of the day?