[Reith85]

A few months on since they merged the channels, there are still things that baffle me about it. I realise BBC News is now running on a skeleton staff but how nobody at New Broadcasting House seems to be able to exercise any decent judgement over the following is genuinely perplexing:

- BBC News Now, The Daily Global, Verified Live: quite simply, why? If you're going to brand segments of the day, at least make an effort of it in terms of the editorial content and the visual identity. To give these segments half-baked title sequences but then not to follow through with distinctive journalistic content or any differentiated visual branding in the astons or the studio completely defeats the purpose of introducing the brands in the first place. They're entirely tokenistic, nothing more. That's not the fault of the presenters, who are more than capable. But it's a complete nonsense that you have Matthew Amroliwala introducing Verified Live saying it's 3 hours of fact checking etc etc - I've watched the Verified Live hours on several occasions and it's essentially a few hours of standard BBC News reports and interviews as you find on any other hour of the News Channel. I can understand why The Context continues to be branded as such as that's clearly a discussion based show with Christian Fraser but the other segments should just revert back to BBC News.

- I don't understand how the likes of Chris Cook tweeted a while ago about the bloodbath of the lower thirds as if it's a proud achievement behind the scenes. The bright red of the breaking news strap is literally blinding. Not to mention that there's now little difference between breaking news and usual news lower thirds. How did anyone think this was a good idea visually? I simply don't understand.

- The way the flipper only operates properly for certain hours of the day and is stuck on the pointless URL at all other hours is very frustrating. Is the BBC News division that seriously underfunded now that we have to rely only on one or two people overseeing the flipper, but as soon as they go home for the day, that's it? The BBC audience (what's left of it) has to make do with a flipper stuck redundantly on a website address before said people come back into work? Either have a flipper that functions at all hours or don't have one at all.

I watch the shadow of the channel that the BBC News Channel now is and I think that the likes of Deborah Turness and Paul Royall need reminding that this channel has a remit as a public service news channel in the UK - it can't all be about the international audience.