[BlightyExPat]

That's encouraging news, but still sad that Martine Croxall remains off air.

Martine Croxall AND Karin Giannone, both talented and well experienced.

[AJB39]

Martine Croxall AND Karin Giannone, both talented and well experienced.

And Kasia Madera as well of course.

[House]

Ben Brown has surprised me. I thought he had been assigned to network. Unless he’s decided to go to the news channel and someone else is replacing him. I can’t imagine network being over numbers. I’m hoping the 9-12 slot will get some regular faces now.

I think Ben only does a couple of days a week for BBC One, so might have been pleased to add his former NC role back to the mix.

I wonder if they plan to develop a new strand (or two) in mornings? It’s never been particularly clear why 8-12GMT was treated so differently to the rest of the schedule in terms of named programmes etc. That might explain why two new ‘chief presenter’ roles have been created, with one more to replace Maryam’s old remit.

[ginnyfan]

Finally, something is happening. 3 experienced, familiar faces returning hopefully means more stability and better coverage on the channel. Hope the other 3 presenters can serve as weekday covers and weekend presenters.

With the studio E retouch happening, this would be a good time for a sort of a mini-relunch of the channel. A second chance to do things the right way.

[DTV]

vast sums of licence fee money

At most, you're talking about less than 0.02% of the BBC licence income. A few hundred k in a news operation whose overall budget is close to half-a-billion.

It’s never been particularly clear why 8-12GMT was treated so differently to the rest of the schedule in terms of named programmes etc.

Because BBC World News never did anything there and, given how little thought apparently went into the formatting of the channel, stranded programmes basically ended up mirroring what was there before. Same reason that the business and sport segments are dotted completely irregularly throughout the schedule, it's a legacy carry over.

[interestednovice]

given how little thought apparently went into the formatting of the channel, stranded programmes basically ended up mirroring what was there before. Same reason that the business and sport segments are dotted completely irregularly throughout the schedule, it's a legacy carry over.

True, although that does rather negate the BBC’s official line that “The BBC News Channel launched in 2023, and is a single channel with the ability to provide international and UK content as appropriate”!

I don’t know why they didn’t pick a lane and stick to it: they could have either just kept the BBC World News name, making carry-overs less strange; or properly started again with a clean slate for the “new” BBC News and tried to think a bit more outside the box about how to make the new service work best. What we’ve ended up with continues to be a confusing hodgepodge of the two predecessor channels, and is clearly a spiritual successor to WN in format and pacing - not the old days of the NC.

[ginnyfan]

Global, Impact and Live brandings/visuals should have been kept. Even with the limited studio set up, at least these had unique music and proper visuals, instead of the embarrassment that succeeded them.

[leewilliams]

At most, you're talking about less than 0.02% of the BBC licence income. A few hundred k in a news operation whose overall budget is close to half-a-billion.

Or to put it another way, hundreds of thousands of pounds that could have been used elsewhere in the news operation or to fund at least a dozen journalists in cut-hit local radio whose audience is falling off a cliff based on today’s RAJAR figures.

I’m prepared to defend the BBC on most things but this was a pretty alarming waste of public money and the perfect cannon fodder for the likes of the Mail who - for once - would probably have a case to bash the Beeb if they fancy writing it up.

Just as importantly this whole saga’s been deeply unfair for the presenters involved whose careers have arguably been tarnished just because they had to see out a process that should have ended months ago.

[interestednovice]

Absolutely leewilliams, let’s not forget that a career in the media is all about profile and activity - so a year off, even if fully paid, does you no favours in the long run.

Also, although we can’t be certain about how the process was conducted exactly, we were critical here at the start that they simply hadn’t appointed enough Chief Presenters (so that much was obvious pretty early on). Employment law is very complicated, and I don’t want to talk about anybody’s case here because it is not the place for it, but I will just say that we do know that you can’t “fire and rehire” by making people redundant and then hiring new cheaper people to replace them in broadly the same role. If restructuring a business, and making redundancies, you have a duty to attempt to find new roles for them wherever possible. It doesn’t necessarily seem that the BBC did this fairly or correctly, especially for former UK NC presenters. I know their review concluded that their own processes were not wrong, but the poor nature of the outcome (leaving many presenters in limbo for so long) and continuing questions about whether they “hand picked” the initial chosen few ahead of time, really raises serious concerns that they might not have followed employment procedures correctly.

[Andrew]

The article says Ben will continue to share his presenting duties with the News at One (which I’m assuming wont be for long since the One is moving to Salford at some point).

Presumably this is all getting ready for the One moving to Salford

Since the short staffing on network began Ben has become more prominent and regularly does 3 or 4 days a week on the One. If that carried on, he’d be absent from his News Channel role more than he’s on it.

Without Ben on network there is distinct lack of men in the network team, there is only Clive

And that’s even if you include all the reserves like Maryam, Tina, Mishal, Katya…