[Critique]

The 11am half hour was decently filled with live interviews with reporters, but there were still some bizarre editorial choices.

Firstly, the running order. It always seems a bit jarring to me when a UK opt-out ends and the story that was being focussed on in the opt (in this case the Welsh First Minister election) is suddenly relegated down the running order. It was the second story covered, but still feels a bit strange. Also of note is that there was no contextualising of what the First Minister does for World viewers, although I know that will please some on here who have a severe adverse reaction to anything that helps the non-UK audience.

However, the bigger issue comes from there not being a break for World viewers at around quarter past. This lead to a lengthy segment on Israel/Palestine being followed up with a quick story about Sainsbury’s online deliveries not working properly! This story also featured in the headlines at the TOTH which, given how short the headlines are on the News Channel these days, means the story had way more prominence than it deserved.

Connected to this, the pacing was all over the place. The first two stories had live reporters who covered their stories off relatively swiftly, only to be followed up by the ten minute live report on Israel/Palestine. A very brief mention of the Sainsbury’s issues was then followed by a decent mix of sports stories, before a report on the Russian elections and then a quick bit of breaking news as the end titles rolled. Israel/Palestine is of course a huge news story, but given it wasn’t even the top story, should it have taken up more than a third of the bulletin’s duration?

Finally, although they do generally use the flipper again these days, it was showing a useless combination of three stories - new Welsh First Minister elected, part of the M25 closed and Sainsbury’s online deliveries not working. No other headlines, Sport or anything else, to the point that they might as well have not bothered. The M25 closure also didn’t get a mention in the bulletin itself.

Even if the UK opts during weekday daytime do return for the run-up to the election, they still need to figure out how to balance the bulletins properly for the joint hours that will continue to make up the majority of output. I wonder if radio-esque split links could be utilised at times?