BBC News Channel General Discussion

Ros presents his last edition of Outside Source on BBC World Service radio tomorrow, Thursday at 11:00GMT.

The radio programme will however continue - not clear yet who will be the new regular radio presenter. Karin Giannone currently presents the radio programme on Fridays.

Ros seems to begin radio programs and then move on to focus on TV versions of that programme.

He began with launching WHYS but then left to present WHYS Television months after its launch.

Then Ros left WHYS Television to launch OS and then to launch the TV version, but now is leaving the radio show to focus on the television version.

Which is fine until you start replacing Business Edition with Outside Source, which needs to go out in the UK at 9pm. One possible solution is to run Outside Source, recorded, an hour later on World News than it is shown in the UK.

With all this talk of saving money, why don't they bring back UK Today. Bring all the top stories from across the nations and regions together and use the resources they already have.

So instead of having one production team, having 15 instead? Not sure that's a viable way of saving money.

I'm not a fan of either the programme or it's presenter, TBH.

UK Today existed purely because there was a need to fill the regional slots on the early digital services (which had no English regional variations at all). It used the existing News 24 production team to pull together reports from around the regions. Once English regions started opting on DTT, it existed just for DSAT but was dropped when DSAT English regions started. So it didn't cost that much money, the reports were being made anyway for regional use and the crew and production team were in place for News 24.

Anyway, history aside, there have been repeated calls over the years for regional resources to be used more effectively across the network, which is entirely sensible on the face of it. It's completely understandable to a casual observer as to why itv send one reporter and the BBC send 3 (plus crews and producers and occasionally more than one live vehicle). Yet actually, the demands of network broadcasting, regional tv and local radio are often very different with have different deadlines. However often with big stories regions will get there first and provide initial coverage to the news channel and network radio. If the story is big enough, network will often send a network reporter or correspondent and perhaps a satellite truck to take over. This actually frees up the regional reporter to work on the local angle and sometimes relieves the regional crew to do other things for the regional programme. It's the best of both worlds as you will get a national angle on the story on the Six and a more local angle, presented by a local reporter on the regional 6:30 opt. They'll share material, edit facilities perhaps and crew but the way the story's told will be different. Yet on the face of it I can see why it looks like unnecessary duplication of resources.

Going back to UK Today though, with all regions available why would the news channel need to make the programme any more? In order to save money the news channel needs to make fewer programmes and sharing programmes with BBC World News (which also has to save money) is a way to achieve that. Sharing the new business programme, plus Outside Source does mean a lot less independent programming across the channels. After all the new proposals are fully in place, the news channel (if I've understood everything right) won't be showing anything independently from 1am until the early afternoon (overnights shared with World, breakfast shared with BBC One, business shared with World, Victoria Derbyshire shared with BBC Two, the One shared with BBC One). Now that's money saving.

Yes, bringing back UK Today wouldn't save any money but what they could do is to show more stories from the regions on the news channel. It costs nothing to send the report and script to London but it would add some good interesting alternative content to the channel.

I'm sure they used to do this more in the early days (when UK Today was around?) - you'd often hear reports with odd out-cues on News 24

They used to do this on "News 24 Tonight" when it was broadcast - this was in the 7pm hour when the News Channel was still in N8.

Yes, again this is something that's often been raised, particularly when they ask the staff about how to save money. Doesn't often come to much routinely, though there are times when the news channel will take a report cut for a region. Reporters will happily add a network outcue if asked. That's often more to do with the fact that a regional package is cut with a regional perspective and may contain references that a mayoral audience don't know about (or need to know about).

Of course a UK Today style opt might be nice as something to fill the void on BBC One HD during the regional opts, the promo loop is just pointless as is the countdown. I feel like either a UK Today style programme or an alternative bulletin every time (like Inside Out) would be ideal for those slots.

Yes but again, that's not going to save any money. The issue of regions not being HD is a more important one. Why the BBC won't add an upscaler to each region's feed at the coding centre I don't know. Even if it's just to the DTT networks that'd be a start.