BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

Huh?? Interesting indeed. Did he present the overnights before? Not so sure.

Well, Mike Embley, who at least used to be regarded as a senior presenter on BBC World News is the regular presenter of what you call "overnights". Mind you, that this is primetime in other areas of the world.

Get the impression Chris Eakin didn't spend much time around trains as a child. Seems far more excited about being at a steam railway, rather than the story they're actually covering.

Also, this is all going a little badly - jumping on a train 'unrehearsed', then leaping out suddenly because he was worried said train would leave. He mentioned something about the news running order having been running late or something.

ETA: Apparently Matthew and Emily were laughing 'all the way through' the segment.

It was fantastic. Really interesting interviewee and delivered with lots of enthusiasm. And it was very funny too! Fantastic reports, wasn't going badly at all.

Indeed, it's "News at Ten" time in some parts of the USA, where Mike is held in very high regard. He's seen as the quintessential British gentleman, epitomizing everything BBC! And, in actual fact, so is Peter Dobbie. Classicly British (Scottish in this case).

Peter Dobbie will be doing this shift for the whole week.

A few years ago I used to wonder (and indeed comment on here) about the reasoning behind putting fairly low-ranking presenters on the overnight simulcast shift, usually as cover (I'm thinking the likes of Janat Jalil, Susan Osman, Richard Forrest). As mentioned on here before, it's always primetime somewhere!

People generally don't like having to work in the middle of the night. If you're trying to climb the ladder you'll put up with it, if you don't have to you won't.

I don't really feel that Alastair Yates is a "low-ranking presenter", but it seems the only time he worked when he was still with the BBC was on overnights. I wonder why.



And I guess it worked quite well for Martine Croxall... strike day presenter, then overnight presenter, now main presenters for BBC NC.

Me neither, hence why I said "usually as cover". In fact I think the fact they put said presenters on covering for such pro's as Alastair, Deborah and Martine, it just highlighted the great gulf between them.

Will Gavin Grey be the new Martine Croxall then?

Jane Hill started on BBC News 24 as overnight presenter as did Joanna Gosling, they have both done well out of it.

Nevertheless, they weren't particularly senior presenters at the time and it's still likely an undesirable shift for many, if they had the choice.



When did Martine break the picket line, and was she a regular presenter at the time?




Presumably because relatively few presenters with any experience and skill are prepared to cover overnight shifts on, presumably, a freelance basis. It's one thing not knowing if you'll be working on Thursday morning or Sunday evening, I suspect it's quite another having to plan your life around last minute overnight shifts. I'm sure the same goes for production and crew too (though I suppose it doesn't matter if they have huge bags under their eyes and are shaking from the caffeine, as know one outside will know).




Oh I thought it made for great television, and I'm a big fan of Chris Eakin. But pausing the interview, about a relatively serious topic, to explain that the steam train has to travel on a second line to move to the back of the train - irrelevant to the discussion of shutting down huge parts of a transport infrastructure fifty years earlier - probably won't win any journalistic awards.

Still, he managed to make what could otherwise have been a pretty boring report really quite entertaining.