BBC One to cut 10 O'Clock News for youth programming

Harry Palmr

This sounds like something dream up in the Frankie Howerd room.

The beeb desperate to get down with the kids want to chop 10 minutes and fill the space with material commissioned for BBC Three.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/feb/14/anger-over-bbc-plan-to-cut-news-at-ten-by-10-minutes

Leading BBC journalists are in revolt at the decision to cut the length of the News at Ten bulletin by 10 minutes and give the time over to youth programming.

Well-known on-screen names including the Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, and other leading foreign correspondents have written to the BBC director general, Tony Hall, and urged him to reconsider.

The decision to cut the length was announced to staff on Monday, in an attempt to convince younger audiences to tune in to BBC One broadcasts by showing BBC Three highlights instead of a longer news programme.

Bowen declined to comment on the message he had sent to the director general, saying it was a private communication, but said: “We all want the BBC to be the best it can be”, adding: “To that end we have plenty of internal debates about what’s happening.”

Hall held a discussion with staff on Tuesday, in which he adopted a “hardline” stance on the changes.

Hard to know what to say about this other than express expected thoughts by a middle aged person about dumbing down and the death of serious.

icdg

To be fair, they’re just cutting it back to the length it had been before it was extended three years ago. It had been that length since it was moved from Nine to Ten in 2000.

And to be also fair, the BBC axed BBC Three as a TV channel some years ago and replaced it with a space on iPlayer (indeed for Irish viewers, who can’t access the iPlayer, it may as well have closed down completely). It’s since shown some long form BBC Three programmes in a variety of graveyard slots, but this would give them a more prominent slot again.

If you want news between 10:30pm-10:45pm from the BBC, there’ll still be Newsnight and the BBC News Channel. To suggest that the BBC needs to run news on three different channels in this time slot is overkill.

Harry Palmr

Sure but anyone who thinks this is going to be a one off event is kidding themselves. If the BBC really worry about what the 16-34 age group are doing then bring back BBC Three properly and spend less elsewhere. As a side note 5live is getting a bit "urban" in certain slots at the moment as they try and get some crossover from radio 1 and 6music

mollser

It's all a bit daft. CBBC got extended to 9pm after bbc3 shut down. Blank screen after 9. Would make a lot of sense to just restore it there as a block of programming from 9 to midnight. Shouldn't be any incremental bandwidth cost at all?

TheRiverman

Wish RTE would cut the SIx One standy up,sitty down, do it on the couch marathon by about forty minutes,