[harshy]

Lauren Taylor is great when she is reading off the autocue her voice and pronunciation is pretty good but it sort of fell apart breaking news time, she kind off stumbled and stuttered through it.

Also the picture on picture effect seemed to end showing the same picture on both and occasionally what’s on the lower thirds also has the same text as the flipper below it.

[Reith85]

Are we ever going to have trusted, authoritative and recognisable faces presenting on the BBC News Channel ever again?

[Brekkie]

God, that's very much a TL-DR post LDN but as I was saying yesterday when someone was complaining about the opposite often reporting the initial breaking news then leaving it for other stories to return to it later is a better use of airtime than just filling and filling and filling asking inane questions which can't really be answered in a way that gives the viewers meaningful information.

[ginnyfan]

Well, from the little I've seen of Lauren Taylor last few days she did seem like your typical, old school BBC news presenter, but reading that detailed report about this mornings breaking news makes me want to reconsider. I did tune into BBC News for 10 minutes or so, it was just standard filler talk over the live footage of the airport. Seemed to be the same on Sky and CNN.

Anyway, what's clear is that BBC News lacks reliable, experienced presenters. It had them in droves, now there's just a few left, with a bunch of inexperienced interns appearing all over the channel. There's always a huge risk a major story will break and one of these people will have to deal with it. The 08.00-13.00 shifts are especially bad, with no designated chief presenters, it's anyone's guess who might appear.

The faith of Martine & Co still seems uncertain but at this point, even if they return, with such a long absence they'll be like newbie interns as well.....

[interestednovice]

I take your point Brekkie, but equally when the story is unfolding live (new developments, more information constantly coming in, live pictures available) it’s the right choice to stick with it as people just finding out about it will be turning on the channel and wanting to see the latest developments.

I was just thinking the other day, while watching another poorly-paced hour on the channel, that people like Mike Embley, David Eades, Karin Giannone, Joanna Gosling, Annita McVeigh, Ben Brown & Reeta Chakrabarti were just so good in years gone by. They brought the right mix of warmth and empathy along with great journalistic instincts and incisive questioning. Breaking News was always expertly covered. It’s clearly not all the fault of the individual presenters that this is now no longer quite the case, as resources behind th scenes have become stretched much more thinly and also the “operate your own autocue”, etc, takes up more of the time of the presenters. Casting your mind even further back, even after routine dual-presentation ended, it was almost always used in serious breaking news scenarios as whoever was on shift on WN would join NC and both present together. This would allow one presenter to be reading breaking news lines coming in, and the other to be presenting at any one time. This prevented “filler” making in on air. It also gave behind the scenes staff a boost as they could combine resources. None of that is possible now.

[interestednovice]

Well, from the little I've seen of Lauren Taylor last few days she did seem like your typical, old school BBC news presenter, but reading that detailed report about this mornings breaking news makes me want to reconsider. I did tune into BBC News for 10 minutes or so, it was just standard filler talk over the live footage of the airport. Seemed to be the same on Sky and CNN.

Anyway, what's clear is that BBC News lacks reliable, experienced presenters. It had them in droves, now there's just a few left, with a bunch of inexperienced interns appearing all over the channel. There's always a huge risk a major story will break and one of these people will have to deal with it. The 08.00-13.00 shifts are especially bad, with no designated chief presenters, it's anyone's guess who might appear.

The faith of Martine & Co still seems uncertain but at this point, even if they return, with such a long absence they'll be like newbie interns as well.....

Outside of Sally Bundock, who seems to be a quasi-Chief Presenter (when really she deserves to be one officially) the 5am to 8am hour is also unallocated. So 5am to 1pm UK time has anybody random presenting. Not great.

[Rolling News]

Lauren Taylor was a presenter on Al Jazeera for 17 years until 2023 and on the ITV News Channel before that so is definitely 'experienced'.

[LDN]

God, that's very much a TL-DR post LDN but as I was saying yesterday when someone was complaining about the opposite often reporting the initial breaking news then leaving it for other stories to return to it later is a better use of airtime than just filling and filling and filling asking inane questions which can't really be answered in a way that gives the viewers meaningful information.

Yeah... I fear that quite a lot of similar points have been bottled up for a while about certain (but certainly not all) recent aspects of BBC News live coverage, and today, with the notion that today's coverage was somehow exemplary, they just exploded out like a Newswatch piñata of outrage.

Perhaps I should get a stress relief ball.

But you're exactly right -- and surely, this is precisely why the pushback was introduced: so that a developing story could be shown in the background, to be returned to from time to time, while other news gets the coverage it deserves.

BBC News (24)/World (News) has always had a strange attitude towards breaking news, whereby if a major story breaks, all the other news in the world simply ceases to exist. (Amazingly, the ticker was actually showing a few other stories today in addition to the breaking news! Progress!)

But surely, if there's nothing useful to say about the burning plane, push it back, show the visuals in a window, and cover other stories. Don't fill a solid hour with endless empty padding when the people you've got on air have no new information to share, they don't know the right questions to ask, and they can't yet provide the right answers anyway. That's a wasted hour that serves nobody well.

---

@LDN - not saying your points are not valid, but I would kindly ask you to reconsider the way you are wording these posts - you are being a bit OTT with your language in my opinion.

Point humbly taken.

No offence was intended, but my apologies if any was caused.

[qwerty123]

Outside of Sally Bundock, who seems to be a quasi-Chief Presenter (when really she deserves to be one officially) the 5am to 8am hour is also unallocated. So 5am to 1pm UK time has anybody random presenting. Not great.

Sally is 5-7 Monday to Thursday (and the 07:30 business update) and Lucy starts at 12:00 so it’s 07:00-13:00 Monday to Thursday and 05:00-12:00 Friday that is less consistent and to be fair even under the old channels 07:00-10:00 had been the inconsistent slot on world where just about anyone would appear for several years.
The main reason the channel now feels so much more inconsistent is probably that the chief presenters take random days off midweek with no obvious pattern rather than them all largely working Monday to Thursday as was previously the case.

---

Well, from the little I've seen of Lauren Taylor last few days she did seem like your typical, old school BBC news presenter, but reading that detailed report about this mornings breaking news makes me want to reconsider. I did tune into BBC News for 10 minutes or so, it was just standard filler talk over the live footage of the airport. Seemed to be the same on Sky and CNN.

Anyway, what's clear is that BBC News lacks reliable, experienced presenters. It had them in droves, now there's just a few left, with a bunch of inexperienced interns appearing all over the channel. There's always a huge risk a major story will break and one of these people will have to deal with it. The 08.00-13.00 shifts are especially bad, with no designated chief presenters, it's anyone's guess who might appear.

The faith of Martine & Co still seems uncertain but at this point, even if they return, with such a long absence they'll be like newbie interns as well.....

If the channel used its resources appropriately it still has more than enough reliable presenters who are more than adequate to deal with breaking news and quite frankly some of those currently off air are not exactly the strongest rolling news presenters. The problem is that many of these people are being used a handful of times a month whilst others who lack the same skills get many more outings.
It’s also important to note that with substantially less resource now available behind the scenes it is likely that even those who have previously been praised for their rolling coverage would no longer be able to output at the level that has become expected of them.
It’s also seems to be forgotten that many of the bigger departures from the channel may well have happened by now regardless of cutbacks due to a combination of age and increased need for cover on BBC One.

[kookaburra]

Steve Lai has started as chief presenter in Singapore. And oh my heavens this graphic…