[Matrix]

BREAKING:

BBC's Newsnight to be cut back as part of savings plan www.bbc.co.uk 

Main Points:
- Newsnight gets cut by 10 minutes and  share resources and reporters with BBC News, it will not have any dedicated Newsnight reporters.

- Newsnight will also lose it’s investigative format and revert to a studio-based debate format.

- Newsnight will also see it’s jobs slashed from 60 to less than 30.

- The One O’ Clock News will move to Salford and be extended to a full hour.

- BBC Breakfast will be extended to 9.30am Mon-Fri.

Also worth a mention that Our World will also close, one of the few dedicated remaining investigative film sections.

[Matrix]

Headlines:

- Newsnight to 30 minutes
- News At One to a hour and relocating to Salford
- New specialist correspondents including one covering AI

I'll be intrigued to see how the 'UK Editor' post (based in Salford) differs from the Home Editor position.

[steve]

I'll be intrigued to see how the 'UK Editor' post (based in Salford) differs from the Home Editor position.

My understanding is Home Editor more focused on policy and process (ie home affairs) and UK more about the big stories that happen across the country. Bit like Lyse Doucet or Jeremy Bowen but for a major event in the UK.

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Sad news but no surprises. Anyone got any idea when this will happen, and who will present the One?

Will be interesting to see how they produce the One - will you get the Breakfast names presenting, will they give some dedicated presenters, or will we simply end up with Jane and Ben using Avanti West Coast…

[interestednovice]

That sounds like a bit of a made-up post, to be honest. It is always hard to swallow when nebulous new roles are being created at the same time as massive cuts.

The only “talk about news stories” format that has actually ever really worked, on the BBC at least, is Dateline London in my opinion. Maybe, at a push, 100 Days did too in its heyday. Of course, Dateline London has already been axed (and we are supposed to regard The Context as a worthwhile replacement). Hopefully the new NewsNight can be closer to the Dateline London level of analysis than the format of The Context - which is far too dumbed-down. Make no mistake though, this is effectively axing NewsNight and relaunching a new debate programme which just so happens to have the same name. You can’t help but feel that Kirsty Walk announced she was leaving because she could see the writing on the wall. The internal politics angle to it is also that they’ve recently lost a big defender of the programme internally, their editor, as he has moved to Africa.

Our World being axed is a travesty, one of the few BBC strands that actually produces truly unique and insightful programming. It doesn’t even cost that much.

Extra News at One and moving to Salford is bound to end up costing a lot and wasting money. Although the extension to an hour is probably driven by an acknowledgement that the merged NC isn’t working, as a way of desperately trying to scrape together more “premium, UK-facing content”.

Breakfast going on until 9:30 also may mean it continues right up until the end on the NC, and along with the extended News at One, helps plug the gap in the BBC One schedule left by axing Doctors.

There is little “special” left about BBC News following these announcements.

[JamieD]

Interesting that it was indeed the case that Newsnight was nearly cancelled altogether. Instead it will remain but will be a much inferior product consisting of mainly debate panels. Just what we needed, more bickering!

Still, this is directly the result of the government's Licence Fee freeze, so I can hardly blame the BBC for cutting back a programme that has a relatively low viewership.

[Ash101]

If they want to have decent 'discussion' around the day's stories, but with BBC correspondents instead of anybodies.. maybe they should just be screening Newscast every single evening instead.

[freeview87]

Interesting that it was indeed the case that Newsnight was nearly cancelled altogether. Instead it will remain but will be a much inferior product consisting of mainly debate panels. Just what we needed, more bickering!

Still, this is directly the result of the government's Licence Fee freeze, so I can hardly blame the BBC for cutting back a programme that has a relatively low viewership.

The problem is it isn't the problem of the freeze because they spend money in other areas which are questionable, create new roles which aren't needed rather than focusing on what they already have.

[thePineapple]

We knew most of this before. The Newsnight situation is depressing and unwise - I said it when it was first discussed; I still think that now.

Also depressing and predictable is reduction in BBC Two documentaries and cutting of Our World - this continues the decline in the priority of the News channel.

Perhaps more interesting is the new "investigative department". I can see that management would want to get more out of Newsnight's investigations - making them organisation-wide might help.

Overall it's an announcements of cuts, but they've gone some way to make it a bit more palatable, at least (if we're trying to be optimistic).

[Pips2022]

Basically they’ve done to Newsnight what they did to the Today programme; it feels weird now that they ever had a dedicated team of reporters.

[ViridianFan]

I know there has to be cuts, but I do think they are in danger of damaging the BBC News brand. 

Newsnight is going to be a shorter version of “the context” with (one hopes) more focus on UK content but basically another half hour of “experts” and “commentators” giving their opinions and arguing with other which in my mind is not news. I really really do not care what X, Y & Z think because 9/10 they don’t agree, if it’s anything political they blame the other side and it very rarely adds anything to my understanding of a news story. Id have argued a show which is focused on investigative journalism is exactly what the bbc needs at the moment and diverting money to that would be a good idea. They might as well just tag it onto the end of the news at 10 to discuss the stories. 

Extension to the news at one sounds ok in principle but I’d like to see how it’s going to be structured to make it distinct from any other hour on the news channel which I fear it could become. The bulletins at the moment are very structured and focused, I fear the news at one could become a rambling hour, slow paced and no focus. 

I cannot understand why they feel the need to move the news at one to Salford. It is nothing but a box ticking exercise. No one can ever tell you what it adds to the program. It will still be there presented by presenters who were based in London who will either relocate or travel up there, its not as if you’re going to suddenly have someone with northern accent presenting it! It’s presented in a studio, which will be branded to look the same as London so that will be no difference. 

What really annoys me most is they whole purpose of spending £1billion on new broadcasting house was to create a hub so that for the first time all the different teams, uk and world and language services were under one roof. We were told it was about sharing resources and expertise. It would drive costs down etc etc. Now a decade later after spending all that money they’re moving teams and bulletins out. Only last year, it’s been implied millions was spent on upgrading and redesigning studio b that’s now only seems to be used in future for news at six and news at ten and Laura K. Once in a blue moon it’s going to host election coverage but when you compare it to studio e which was in nearly constant use I don’t think it’s good value for money, especially at a time of cuts

My biggest bug bear of all is this talk of a digital BBC. It’s now becoming increasingly clear to me that the current BBC big wigs want to move the BBC to become online only. With trailers often only pointing people to iplayer, even down to the less than impressive ident packages for the uk channels when compared to their foreign counterparts eg BBC Nordic.

 Yes viewing figures are going down for traditional methods however they still make up a large part of how the BBCs audience access their content. As so often seems the case, the BBC have become obsessed about accessing the bbc digitally even if it isolates huge numbers of its current audience. We’ve seen it recently with Radio 2 with changing the line up to attract a younger audience. What ends up happening is the changes annoy large numbers of the BBCs loyal audience who begin to swap their loyaities who are never replaced by enough of the audience the bbc is chasing.

I will say that the live pages are good especially for things like the Covid inquiry however i think there is a place for a news channel which can provide that overview look of how a day is shaping up. 

There’s only one other thing which struck me. I will say this is coming from the “conspiracy theory part of my brain”. The creation of these groups of expertise would make it much easier to sell off departments if the bbc was to ever be privatised. More and more it seems multi-skilled teams are being replaced. 

Like I said I get cuts have to be made, doesn’t mean I have to like seeing the bbc news being weakened in the way it is.