The Murder of Jill Dando

Yes, the Six was similar to the way Channel 4 news was presented in the 90s where the main presenter would complete most interviews and the secondary presenter would mainly read.
In the early days of the virtual Six, Anna often played secondary presenter with Peter at the helm. Im sure I read somewhere that he was the only presenter she would do that with. When Martyn moved from the Nine to the Six, im confident he was never paired with Anna

Was Martyn axed then in 1999 or did he leave by his own free will (possibly because of their not being enough "good news").

Remember he left the day Scottish parliament opened.

The BBC replaced him with Huw Edwards. He was offered a job on BBC World but decided to leave.

BBC treated some of its stuff poorly. when the time come to put them out to grase..

I realise this is off topic, but I've never liked that format. I just don't see the point in having two presenters if one of them is only going to pop up for a few minutes to read the less important stories. Sky News did it during the day for a few years (and, of course, still do on Sunrise), and strangely, German broadcasters seem to use that format a lot. To me, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Funny thing about fish finger, julia was always on the left, John was on the right. Juile on her holls John moves to the left..

It depends on the format but it can make a lot of logistical sense for the main host to concentrate on the top 3-4 stories, especially if interviews are involved, and a second presenter to cover the rest. A secondary presenter role is also a good way to ease in new talent too.


Personally not a huge fan of newsreaders alternating stories or even sentences, and I think that's why (along with budgets) many bulletins have become single headed.

That’s a fair point - I guess I hadn’t really looked at it from a behind the scenes perspective, instead focusing on how it looks on screen. I suppose a lot of it does depend on how it’s executed on screen. For example, Heute-journal (ZDF’s equivalent to Newsnight) uses this format and it works quite well, because both presenters are introduced at the start and say goodbye at the end; in contrast, I never liked the way Sky used to do it, where the second presenter didn’t appear/wasn’t introduced in the TOTH. Though I think VTM in Belgium have an interesting take on it - sometimes one of the other presenters will come on and do an ‘explainer’ on a certain topic at one of the big screens in the studio.

I’m still not a massive fan of the format - I think with interviews it can often be better if both presenters ‘share the load’, so to speak - but I can certainly see how it has merit.

I think generally, fixed bulletins can work well with one presenter, whereas rolling news (especially during the day) is often better with two.

There was quite a big presenter shake-up in the 1999 revamp, quite a few familiar names disappeared, including Andrew Harvey and Ed Stourton. It was also the time John Humphrys finally stopped appearing, because although he'd given it up on a full-time basis when he joined Today back in 1987, for the next decade he still read the news on a part-time basis and was presumably contracted for X appearances a year.

The 1999 revamp line-up took a while to sort out, the papers were often reporting on the runners and riders - as mentioned earlier, Jill Dando might have been involved but they couldn't decide what she'd do so she decided to just leave, and I don't think Huw was the first choice for the Six either.

I do remember when Martyn Lewis stopped doing the Nine in 1993, there were stories in the papers that the Beeb were trying to put him on Breakfast News as there was nowhere else for him to go, but eventually they put him on the Six.

There's some interesting stuff in Peter Sissons' autobiography, seemingly Michael Beurk and Martyn Lewis didn't get on because they were basically left to sort out the rota themselves - as long as one of them was doing it, they didn't mind - and Beurk was convinced Lewis was deliberately getting in quickly and nabbing his preferred slots before Beurk could have his pick. Sissons says he and Beurk got on better but they still sorted out the rota themselves, leading to Sissons once having to read the news for 21 consecutive nights while Beurk went on holiday.

That's interesting as the clip they always show on '90s documentaries is that of John Humphrys reporting on the 'Battle of Britpop'.

A quick jaunt through Genome points out that John Humphrys stopped reading the news in December 1986, before joining Today in January 1987, but then returned in the summer of 1989, primarily on the Six - presumably the period between Nicholas Witchell stopping and Peter Sissons joining - and from then on he made semi-regular appearances on all the bulletins for many years, perhaps unsurprisingly mostly in the summer while the regulars were away. His last appearance reading the news on Genome is in December 1998.

I remember when he was on The Frank Skinner Show, Frank showed clips of him closing the One O'Clock News on several occasions by putting his pen in his jacket pocket, then presenting him with a jacket with several dozen pens in the pocket.

As for Jill Dando, she's first billed in Genome on Breakfast Time in May 1988, which was the time they went from the presenters reading the news to the return of a proper newsreader. The first time she does the whole show is in the summer of 1989, but she progressed very quickly, presenting the Six for the first time not long after.



I always like double-headed news presentation, I think it's a shame we don't have it on any bulletin at the moment because it seems a bit warmer. Of course, the high water mark of double-headed presentation was in 1985-86 when all three of the main BBC bulletins used it.