[AaronTV]

I think today was a good example where the Channel just isn’t working.

The Today programme had genuinely agenda setting interviews this morning, and set up for a non-stop cascade of stories and developments through the day.

That was captured very well on Sky, rounded off with Ridge tonight. On the BBC, no sense of pace or purpose to grabbing their own agenda-setting and moving the story on.

Mainly because that’s almost impossible to do when you have two audiences to serve, and also because in politics it can be the drip-drip of multiple stories (schools, reshuffles, Pincher, etc) that creates a narrative and an agenda. None of which is big enough for a standalone stream/break out but together are important.

I’m just not convinced they would be setting the agenda any more effectively or developing any further insights on the day’s events on a UK only news channel watched by less than 100,000 people that’s entirely financially unviable. I just don’t buy it unfortunately. 

The network bulletins are designed to offer that analysis and reporting, and do so successfully to many millions of people. 

There are certainly broader arguments to be made about how BBC News as a whole seems to be struggling to get real scoops and lead the news agenda, but that was the case long before the channel’s merged. 

BBC News as a whole has a vast budget overall - if anything, not having a domestic channel to stretch services should be strengthening the quality of reporting on the network bulletins and online. 

In the run up to the election, I can certainly see the merits of a ‘The Campaign Today’ style program or even from the New Year a daily evening UK news/politics show, but it would only be viable if shown on BBC Two and BBC News (on the UK opt out). Right now, I think the audience is served absolutely fine IMO.