[LDN]

What’s bizarre is that there must be 100s of variants of the BBC News theme kicking around now that have been used for various programmes over the years, so why not reuse one of those

Using the same theme with different cheap visuals makes it look like a tin pot operation that can only afford one piece of music. It’s the sort of thing one of the Local TV channels would have done.

I totally agree, Andrew. It baffles me too. When these new strands were announced last week, I did - for a fleeting moment - wonder whether they might not have commissioned any new theme music for them. I suspected they might have reused something, but I really didn't expect them to use the exact same title music as every other bulletin.

Like you say, there are literally hundreds of versions of the Lowe music now and I'm sure they could have dug something out of the archive and reused it. They could even have resurrected the BBC World News 2010 themes - The Hub, Impact, GMT - and they would have been infinitely better than this. In fact, there was even a theme from the 2010 WN rebrand that never made it to air - Frontline with Lyse Doucet.

Ha! I stumbled across the Frontline audio package on my PC a few weeks ago (I do love the full one-minute closing bed and titles!), and I had much the same thought at the time about reusing older themes for current BBC News output. Great minds thinking alike...! 

There are so many titles that have been virtually forgotten to time -- from the punchy Despatch Box, and Westminster Live; to the near-ancient 2W News & Sport, Newyddion BBC, and News 24 Tonight. 

I don't understand why those in charge believe that using the exact same music over and over and over again, until everyone's sick to death of it, is a better solution than delving into the huge library of BBC News music and using older options that are still on-brand. 

There's something depressing about the complete lack of imagination in both the visual and aural aspects of BBC News' new design direction.