[DTV]

It was 45 minutes of already produced content aired on Friday night in what is a low key slot for News channels with a 15 minute follow up.

If they'd edited it down to 30 minutes and filled a back half hours with it, probably more than once, would we even be having this conversation?

You're right, we wouldn't be having this conversation if the circumstances were completely different. It would definitely have fit better as a back-half programme - but only because it's about as newsworthy as a lot of what else goes in those slots. Fundamentally, if people really want to see the full length interview, they could be pointed towards iPlayer.

Also, as a correction, 19:00 is not a low key slot, evenings are generally when News channel viewership is at its highest.

A bit of news snobbery going on here I think. The general viewer will be far more interested in it than an extended interview with a foreign president or UK government minister.

Again, you're right, this is largely news snobbery - but quite rightly. The BBC isn't a tabloid, it's not supposed to determine its news agenda - particularly the front-end - based on the stories that they think people are interested in.

It'd be one thing if we were talking about the most popular programme on TV, but what this story ultimately boils down to is one of the presenters of not even the most popular morning magazine, which only gets slightly more viewers than the main edition of BBC London news, getting fired for doing something dodgy, but not illegal. The rest is gossip. This is not a story that materially affects the average viewer, it is not a story that actually matters in any political, geopolitical, economic, scientific or human catastrophic sense. At best, it is a story deserving of a two-minute VT second-to-last in the running order of the BBC News at Six on maybe two key days in the story's development. That's it.

I feel some on this forum are letting their interest in media stories cloud their judgement here, as I doubt we'd be hearing these kinds of excuses for other celebrity gossip stories leading the News at Ten and Newsnight.