[Newshound47]

Indeed, they should have been honest with viewers from the start. Autocue operators and behind the scenes technical staff and journalists should not have been axed.

If they couldn’t afford a proper UK opt, then they shouldn’t have done it. They should have admitted to Ofcom that they were closing the BBC News Channel, kept BBC World News pretty much as it was and broadcast that in the UK. The “World News” name would be a clear differentiator signalling that the channel was a global feed. In quarter-past-the-hour breaks, they could have done “UK News in Brief” headlines much as Newsday used to do. This would be infinitely more useful to viewers than the “Across the UK” repackaged local reports - valuable naturally UK-only time should cover the top UK stories of the day and not random regional human interest stories.

Separately, basic feeds covering UK rolling stories could have been made available via iPlayer, the BBC News website and app. I would call this channel “BBC News Breaking” and this would basically be equivalent to opts now but using a real studio.

I would have kept radio and any NBH newsroom revamps away from the plans. No “visualised radio”, no non-news content aside from established weekend Click, Travel Show, Hardtalk, etc factual programmes. No simulcast domestic bulletins - straight World feed instead.

If budgets couldn’t cover this, cut elsewhere. It’s often brought up that there’s some kind of “compact” with viewers that they get “stuff they want to see” (entertainment; Eastenders etc) and also “stuff they should be shown”. I reject that thinking entirely. Just go like PBS and refocus on true exclusively “nobody else will do it” PSB content and leave entertainment for others. That would preserve news at the cost of things like Match of the Day. You could get the same programme elsewhere (probably ITV) and it would make no difference. No other broadcaster will step in to provide news in an equivalent way.

PBS doesn’t have to persuade people to pay for a license fee through.