29-11-2023, 04:16 PM
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.
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.