[interestednovice]

Indeed, at the end of Newsnight you crash into Singapore’s output and join Newsday without even a proper opt-in point. I know we’ve complained in the past about clunky opts on BBC Two and the NC, but sometimes the way they treat the News at Ten, followed by Newsnight, followed by Newsday is a real mess. You regularly leave NaT before the weather has finished, just randomly fading out with no continuity. Then Newsnight starts; at the end of that you “crash” into in-progress Newsday. If you keep watching even longer, Mishal Husain’s voice tells you that there will be “more news at the top of the hour, straight after this programme” before you get Asia Business Report. Then, Newsday again, before eventually Washington output starts and you get a straight news bulletin but with a US-slant for PBS viewers. Anybody watching in the UK overnight would be forgiven for being utterly confused.

After the News at Six, you have a solid half-hour of Sportday and the same after the News at One. After that sport you then go straight into a global-focused hour in both instances, so domestic stories will be way down the running order most of the time. If a UK-opt happens to be in progress, you will get coverage of one story only so you’d better hope that was the one you were interested in!

So, although news of sorts is covered on the NC throughout the day, depending on the exact time it may be radically different news, a simulcast of something promoted as primarily on another channel anyway (such as Politics Live which is always advertised as on “BBC Two and iPlayer”) or something which, really, isn’t actually news at all - like Political Thinking with Nick Robinson in visualised radio form, or an episode of something random like BBC Wales Investigates.

In the old days, you’d never go more than half an hour without a comprehensive headline summary at least.