[Keith]

As it says in the article, this presenter review looks to be the BBC's way of giving itself cover and finally bringing the five of them back into the news channel

It also mentions Christian Fraser seems to be the latest presenter with concerns about the merged channel. Let's hope he doesn't end up following Yalda out of the door

The article mentions they've been having to use freelancers due to these five presenters being unavailable on screen (though still being paid), so presumably that's been fairly costly.

In my opinion, one of the aspects of the merger that's made reasonable sense is having overnights from Washington and Singapore. I seem to recall reading that UK staff working overnights had additional time off due to night working, and I assume may have also been paid I higher rate for those hours compared to daytime hours. Pre-merger in the UK those hours were already a simulcast of World News, so I don't think UK viewers are any worse off due to that change.

The launch of "single story streams" was presumably an expansion of the website live feeds. However, in general I don't think using these for UK opt-out has enhanced the channel for UK viewers. Probably the biggest issue is during these opts no other news stories seem to get mentioned. Potentially this could be resolved/improved by having the ticker working and showing at least 5 top headlines. Maybe also the occasional pushback every half hour for a couple minutes to display the headlines and summary on the right of the screen.

I'd like to hope the review will conclude that there isn't sufficient UK content/opt-outs during 9am to 6pm weekdays. It's reasonable to assume that someone high up is already having doubts over the 5Live simulcast, with it's TV coverage being reduced to an hour.

I know I've mentioned it before but a few hopefully low cost improvements could be made as follows...
1. Better use of the ticker, as currently it's displaying 3 headlines and often nothing. I'd suggest 5 Global headlines, followed by at least 3 UK specific headlines. Crucially it would need to work all the time, including during UK opt-outs. I dare say with they might even be able to use an RSS feed or similar from the BBC News website for this (though might need to be able to filter out / reword some headlines). At least this way if they're focusing on only one or two news items we could read what else is happening.

2. Replace the 'Around the UK' 90sec(?) filler with a summary of UK nations headlines. This could be pre-recorded by any reporter from a static camera somewhere within the newsroom or the balcony. Whilst this would probably require someone to update it every couple of hours, it would be more informative than a seemingly single random regional(?) news item.

3. Reinstate a few pre-recorded programmes into the back half-hours during weekday daytimes for World viewers, similar to pre-merger scheduling. Then during these programmes UK viewers could receive news coverage that has a notable UK focus.