[LDN]

It's disappointing -- but not at all surprising - that there's been no mention at all on the BBC News channel of the bus crashing into a shop at Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, an incident that took place two and a half hours ago, resulting in "a number of casualties" according to emergency services, and which was picked up by local Manchester news sources like MEN within 35 minutes of it happening.

The BBC finally published an online article about the crash around half an hour ago, but it seems particularly poor that this still hasn't even been mentioned on air as a brief piece of breaking news. Prior to the merger, this kind of news would quickly have made it to air on the old BBC News Channel, and you could expect regular updates on the story (even just a brief few words between other stories), and perhaps even a reporter on the scene if needed. 

Now, post-merger, the combined channel has of course been in international news mode with Verified Live, focusing largely on the Israel-Gaza conflict. But even when the Israel-Gaza coverage actually took a pause at 1515 for an in-brief round-up of UK stories, they just repeated the same three UK headlines from the 1415 round-up in a different order, with nothing about the Manchester crash, or any other UK story that might be developing. And nothing even when the UK opted out at 1530 before Rishi Sunak began his speech.

This Manchester incident is exactly the kind of live UK coverage that has suffered since the merger. It has no place on an international channel, but it's not 'major' enough to warrant opting out for dedicated UK coverage. It's a shame that this kind of developing domestic news, which the old BBC News Channel covered so capably, has been all but abandoned. 

And FFS, when one story is dominating TV coverage, why not use the ticker to provide a useful summary of other global and UK news stories? Instead, the ticker is just cycling through the same meagre handful of headlines, all related to Israel-Gaza and nothing else. 

That said, BBC News has always failed miserably in its misuse of the ticker in this way -- devoting it entirely to a single story when that event is dominating the headlines, instead of seeing the value in using the ticker to summarise all the other stories that aren't getting reported on air. 

What possible value does the BBC think it's providing viewers by showing them the same five headlines, all about the same story, on an endless 35-second loop for hours at a time?