[Reith85]

I don't want to stand accused of repeatedly bashing the merged BBC News channel but it continues to be inferior in several respects, in my opinion. Leaving aside the poor and misjudged presentational aspects of the channel, I've been watching large chunks of it this weekend and I've been left rather saddened by it all. I know we're currently in the "lull" period between Christmas and New Year when not many are watching television, but across all the times I've been watching, I could not name one single presenter who was familiar - at least to me, in the UK. Tuning into the channel now is like a game of "Guess Who". This isn't to say they are necessarily bad presenters - it would just be nice to tune in from time to time and see some familiar, trusted faces, as one did before the merged channel was a thing. And it's a reflection of how tardy the BBC is as an organisation that, as the clock ticks into 2024, they still haven't resolved the issue with Martine Croxall et al.

There are also questionable editorial judgements being made. T
For example, they've just aired the Sydney New Year fireworks for about 3 minutes at 1pm (GMT). The person presenting (I couldn't name her) talked all the way through them with inane comments such as "Fireworks going off across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the famous Sydney Opera House". I mean, why? We don't need this spelling out to us and it's not as if she was tasked with giving us audio-visual captions. They then cut the fireworks short after 3 minutes before returning to said presenter and pre-packaged reports. I switched to Sky News where they continued airing the Sydney fireworks uninterrupted for another 7 minutes before going back to Nick Quraishi (a familiar Sky News face, working throughout the festive period) in the studio. Increasingly, Sky News is making this merged BBC News channel look amateurish in the extreme.

I am not typing this to bash the BBC - more a reflection of how sad I am that here in the UK, the BBC has slashed its News Channels (both domestic and World) to an unrecognisable, often misjudged core. I hope 2024 sees the merged channel beginning to find its feet but I am not holding my breath.