[LDN]

The BBC has published its Annual Plan. No surprises as far as News is concerned and some rather vague details for the News Channel.

www.bbc.co.uk 

Across 2024/25, we will develop plans to transform the way we work across BBC News. UK story teams will have an increasing focus on digital storytelling and live output, with a reduction in the amount of television packaging. We will use new technologies to deliver our news output more efficiently and more flexibly. We will also continue to review all output to ensure it is delivering value for money and continue to look at where we need to reduce broadcast hours, working with Ofcom to review proposals where appropriate.

I can't help but wonder -- given the Director-General's announcement on Monday that the BBC will "proactively deploy AI" across its services -- how long it will be before the Beeb announces the replacement of its UK news channel (due to low audience numbers vs. licence fee pressures etc) with an 'innovative' new service featuring AI-generated (but human-editor-approved!) half-hourly breakfiller-style 'bulletins', auto-generating a round-up of the latest news compiled for UK audiences from BBC News content packaged for TV or other platforms, such as the News app or TikTok.

Indeed, within the next few years -- and far sooner than many of us are prepared to imagine, myself included -- I'm quite sure that something along the lines of my batsh*t crazy prediction above will come to pass.

Over the last twelve months, the BBC has been aggressively avoiding any promotion, or even mention, of the News Channel whenever possible, consistently referring audiences instead to the BBC News website and app, or iPlayer live-streams, where previously they were encouraged to watch its rolling news service. It's clear that the BBC is already trying to steer UK audiences away from its TV news service towards its online provisions.

And from the above quote in the Annual Report, the BBC is now actively working to further 'de-emphasise' its TV news coverage, by focusing more heavily on packaging more of its reporting for non-TV platforms. The natural outcome of this course of action, surely, is that eventually, only a handful of stories will be 'traditionally' packaged for the sacrosanct 1, 6 and 10, and for Breakfast, but nearly everything else will be aimed primarily at BBC News website and mobile/app users, presumably with more 'bitesized' reporting, and more 'explainer'-style clips, and fewer in-depth pieces.

With increasing licence fee pressures, and reduced to nothing more than occasional opt-outs for the most essential breaking stories, the BBC News Channel in the UK will surely be viewed as an increasingly irrelevant and expensive extravagance in cash-strapped times, as viewers increasingly turn first to the website and app for information. In the cruellest terms, there are obvious headline-grabbing savings to be made in terms of redeploying or releasing presenters, reporters, crew and other staff dedicated to the UK feed, in favour of a predominantly AI-powered service with human editorial oversight.

Meanwhile, the commercially-focused World feed would continue -- after all, the BBC has recently been investing and working to expand availability of the BBC News channel internationally (especially in the lucrative US market), so it clearly sees a strong business opportunity there. Obviously, it would also need a similar roster of TV-ready news content to the BBC One news programmes for its global TV channel, and it would need that content around the clock.

So there would still be some investment in high-quality reporting of essential stories, without a doubt.

But since the merger, we've already seen a huge increase in discussions, panels and opinions across BBC News, all of which greatly reduces the amount of airtime for all that pesky, expensive news reporting. And if the BBC News channel were to continue solely as an international commercial enterprise, without the regulatory constraints and domestic obligations of the UK feed dragging it down, then surely commercial pressures would eventually come to influence decisions made regarding content -- not by kowtowing to particular brands, but rather by reducing the amount of actual reporting and news coverage in order to cut costs.

Which stories are more important to cover than others in a bulletin, when there's only time for 4 packages instead of 6? Which stories -- which would have been covered before -- won't make the cut, if more time every hour is devoted to discussion and opinion? More opinions = less airtime for real reporting = less content needing to be packaged for TV bulletins = savings!

Now... perhaps I'm overreacting. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong on all of these musings (particularly on the AI bulletins...!), and I'll look terribly foolish. It wouldn't be the first time.

But given the direction in which the BBC News channel has already been moving for the last couple of years, combined with today's announcement of a "reduction in the amount of TV packaging", I don't think it's unreasonable to look ahead at the road that's been charted, and consider a not-too-distant future in which the UK news channel no longer exists as anything but a rolling breakfiller with video inserts; and the surviving World news channel descends into an unbearable hellscape of talking heads barking idiotic opinions at each other -- briefly interrupted by news bulletins.

Forgive us, Lord Reith, for we have sinned. 🙏🏼