BBC News Channel General Discussion

Wasn't business news scaled back on the Channel as part of DQF?

It was. The bulletins returned in November and have clearly been deemed successful since they are extending the hours. It can't be that much more expensive as they have everything in place anyway.

AFAIK they no longer have someone based at the London Stock Exchange any more for Business updates and reports right?

Correct but they didn't for the last few years at TVC either.

I'm glad they are extending the hours, it seemed odd having them up till two in the afternoon but not one at the Closing Auction.

Ben Thompson has been doing those same updates since the officcial bulletins were axed. All that happened in November was the introduction of new presentation.

If i'm correct, ben was only brought in if there was a developing story, he was talking as a guest and not presenting it. Also, there wasn't much business news, which the bulletin covered.

EDIT: he was the duty business correspondent for the news channel whilst there were no bulletins?

Nope he gave regular updates each hour. The same as he is doing now.

He didn't Ben or Victoria etc.. only appeared when there was business news to cover and they tended to focus on one story.
like this ..

Nonsense, your clip is a story update during the main news. Nothing to do with the regular business updates on the catwalk, which h have happened since the move to NBH!

There were no business updates on the catwalk until November at least not scheduled or with a focus on more than one story.

To clarify: pre-NBH the news channel had a business bulletin around the :45 mark every hour between 08:30 and 23:00, in which a number of stories were read by the business presenter, interviews were conducted or replayed, and usually some form of markets analysis was offered by the presenter. When they moved to NBH Ben returned as a dedicated business correspondent, reporting about once an hour on a single business or economics story. Unlike the previous bulletins, he only reported on a single story a day, and was only live until about 5pm (when they switched to a recording from earlier.) Unike usual reports, this was Ben on the catwalk with graphics on the screen, and introducing segments of earlier interviews - it wasn't packaged in the way Emma Simpson's report on the Six would be. He also appeared to cover breaking news when needed.

Late last year they reverted to Ben covering a wider selection of stories in this time, rather than just the one, but still with more comment from Ben (on the catwalk) than DTL interviews (as seen in the TVC days). They seem to only interview one or two guests per day for the NC directly with the rest being replays from BBC Breakfast and other sources (radio, packaged reports, possible World News?). New presentation was also introduced.

As far as I can tell all that's changing now is these bullins will continue until later in the day - at present they seem to end at around 2pm, with only an update on the FTSE by the main presenter at the end of the :45 headlines.