[justinh]

As we've seen each time the UK channel has opted out to cover a story, there appears to be a policy in place to never refer to any other story during a UK opt. We don't get round-ups of other stories or headlines, and the ticker -- if it's working at all - rarely shows other headlines either. The policy seems to be that if an opt out is needed to cover a UK story, they'll exclusively cover that story and pretend that nothing else is happening anywhere else. 

As a result of this, during UK opts, BBC News viewers in the UK might well be getting comprehensive coverage of an important UK story, but they might well be waiting for hours, as today, before they even see or hear another UK or international headline being mentioned on screen. 

So why is the ticker being used to show information about that one UK story -- albeit with a single additional reference to online coverage of the Covid Inquiry -- instead of providing a more useful full rundown of other important headlines around the world? 

Lots of hand-wringing on here over the months about how the UK opts don't provide the headlines in the same way that news channels traditionally do, but that's completely rational when you think about the fact that the bulk of the audience is watching online now.

More than ever, live news is only being consumed when something big happens - rather than as something you leave on, dip into briefly, or (even more rare) as appointment viewing. Most people watching the UK opt are doing so in a web browser or on an app. And they're doing so because they want to know about updates about Nottingham specifically. Far fewer are watching the output as a news *channel* so to speak.

It's a trade-off, but I think it's a rational one if the BBC no longer values the tiny audience that a free-to-air news channel brings in.