[DTV]

On weekdays it probably should be the 5pm and 9pm hour they're concentrating on.  Obviously the schedule had already changed a bit since 2018 anyway with Outside Source moving earlier, so be interesting to see if it was the format or the time slot which bought in the viewers there.    I do think a straight BBC World News bulletin in the 9pm hour would probably be preferential to The Context - appeal to viewers who want detailed news from the BBC but maybe in more depth than the 10pm bulletin, or just don't want to stay up to watch it.

Certainly, the lack of a World News Today-style structured international news bulletin is one of many missed opportunities/bizarre decisions on the new channel - was something the BBC did really well and there is clearly a market for something global in that slot (it never rated especially well before Outside Source - so that was clearly doing something right, even if a lot of people on here did think Mk1 OS was gimmicky). If Yalda Hakim's new Sky programme is a proper world news hour, they've also likely ceded ground there.

17:00 hour you've got a bit more wriggle room for UK news as you're out of Asia-Pacific peak and coming to the end of South Asia peak, plus World opt-out at 17:30 for Focus on Africa. To be fair, they do generally use that half-hour for domestic news, but, obviously, constrained by the torpid format.

I'd also note that the best performing non-news programmes in 2018 were The Film Review (axed), The Papers (axed) and Dateline London (axed), while Sportsday and Newswatch, which both remain, were never particularly strong performers. Again, odd decisions - though there could be rights issues around films, culture was always a big part of World News, so something could have worked there; the Papers could have been widened to included international press (as per 05:45 review) and it's not like the new channel is against talking about the news rather than reporting it; and Dateline London was fairly well respected internationally. But, then again, I suspect this is emblematic of the channel's leaders not really knowing what they want to do/should be doing.