BBC Late Night News Show Wounded

[Mark Jeffries]

"NewsNight," BBC2's long-running 10:30 p.m.-ish newscast considered by some the UK equivalent of the U.S.' "Nightline" in the Koppel era, is being shortened by 10 minutes (when a BBC 40 minutes is equivalent to an American commercial television hour these days) and laying off around half its staff, including its in-show investigative team, to basically become U.S. cable news with panels screaming at each other (I know, British civility, but...)--Deborah Turness, the Beeb's news chief (who I believe did nothing significant when she was running NBC News or MSNBC), says they are increasing their investigative unit, not to mention expanding BBC1's 1 p.m. newscast to an hour (but moving it out of New Broadcasting House to their Salford studios for some reason), but I think the fix is in:

https://www.thewrap.com/bbc-newsnight-layoffs-cuts-cost-reductions-debates/

Of course, "NewsNight"'s most famous moment was years ago when anchor Jeremy Paxman attempted to get a straight answer from a politician by repeating his question again and again for over 10 minutes and failed miserably.

And what's with the Beeb giving their newscasts the "News at..." title?  Isn't that ITV's trademark?  Seems to me ITV should change their openings to have an animated globe flattening out and a theme song full of boops and beeps.

[Adam Bowie]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 10:34 PM Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course, "NewsNight"'s most famous moment was years ago when anchor Jeremy Paxman attempted to get a straight answer from a politician by repeating his question again and again for over 10 minutes and failed miserably.

Of note - it's just "Newsnight" without the extra capital.

 

And what's with the Beeb giving their newscasts the "News at..." title?  Isn't that ITV's trademark?  Seems to me ITV should change their openings to have an animated globe flattening out and a theme song full of boops and beeps.

I think it's more "BBC News at..." and then a time. There's a bulletin at 1pm, 6pm (with 30 mins of local news at 6.30pm) and 10pm on BBC One. But yes that means that nightly at 10pm (or 10.15pm if ITV1, they're stretching one of their biggest reality shows out) you have "BBC News at Ten" up against "ITV News at Ten."

There was a period of time when ITV started shunting around their nightly news broadcast, gaining the pejorative "News at When?", and the BBC shifted its Nine O'Clock News to 10.00pm. That opened up 9.00pm to drama shows that could include "after the watershed" content.

Interesting point is that the cumulative biggest rated show on British TV most days is the combined ratings of all the BBC Local news bulletins at 6:30pm. They outperform all the soaps, most major dramas and all but the biggest reality shows.

[Mark Jeffries]

Here in the States, as I referred to the other day, David Muir at 6:30 p.m. with "World News Tonight" is promoed by ABC as the most-watched program on American television, not counting the NFL. And in Australia, I've seen that the 5 to 7:30 p.m. time slots in Australia consistently pull bigger numbers than the rest of prime time (once again, not counting some live sports).  This is only the six biggest cities, however. The only dinner hour national news is on the pubcaster SBS at 6:30. The newscasts at 5 on Network 10 (although only truly local in Melbourne and Sydney, due to cutbacks by Paramount the other big cities have news shops, but the anchors are in either Melbourne or Sydney) and at 6 on Seven and Nine are local. Ten's news is followed at 6:30 p.m. by the "View/Daily Show" cross "The Project" (the "Neighbours" reboot is on flanker channel 10 Peach, as it was when it ended the first time) and Nine is followed at 7 p.m. by the long-running tab "A Current Affair" (licensed by Fox in the U.S. for their version back in the 90s). The pubcaster ABC does their news at 7 p.m.

As for the rest of that time period, at 5 p.m. on Seven and Nine are game shows (on Seven, a local version of "The Chase," on Nine, a reboot of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" called "Millionaire Hot Seat," but it will be replaced in the new year by an Australian version of "Jeopardy!" shot in the UK and hosted by Stephen Fry, who is also doing the new UK version--this would mean that SBS will have to move to another time slot the U.S.version, which in their listings it's said "hosted by the late Alex Trebek") and "Home and Away" at 7 p.m. on Seven (it's currently on a holiday hiatus). The ABC leads into their news with a current affairs show called "The Drum" and SBS leads into their news with U.S. "Jeopardy!", "Letters and Numbers" (i.e. "Countdown") and "Mastermind Australia."

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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