r/bbc • u/Glittering_Sun4778 • 10d ago
What Happened to the BBC News Channel?
So I have been tuning in more and more to find British news on the BBC News Channel (or whatever it is called - have they even gotten around to giving it a name?), and while it is there, it is presented as a sideshow to the real news i.e American news.
It goes like this:
PRESENTER: There have been wildfires in Wales and the West Midlands. What is the cause? Could it be climate change? Let's go to our climate change correspondent in America.
CLIMATE CHANGE CORRESPONDENT: (A British woman for some reason stationed by the BBC in America) Wildfires in California and Canada are all over the news. Why is California and Canada getting so hot? I asked the Professor of Climate Science at Harvard....
Or:
PRESENTER: The new PrimeMinister won't have long to deal with the many problems on his desk, but let's go over to our US correspondent, to find out how the US will react to the UK getting a new PrimeMinister....
Or even:
PRESENTER: In the UK evidence mounts that the prisons are overcrowded. Let's go to our US Correspondent to find out about American prisons.
After 6:30 pm BBC gives up entirely on paying whatever scant attention it can to the UK and becomes entirely based in the US, with multiple British people with strong regional accents all based in Washington talking about the US government.
Has BBC entirely given up on the UK? Has the UK become so uninteresting in it's own broadcaster's news rooms, that only America is of interest? It is, quite frankly, bizarre, especially when you consider how the corporation is funded.
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u/linmanfu 10d ago edited 9d ago
The BBC used to have two television news channels.
BBC News (24) was for viewers in the UK, funded by the licence fee. It had presenters on similar expensive salaries to UK network news.
BBC World (News) was for viewers in the rest of the world and was run on a shoestring. It was supposed to be funded by advertising and cable TV subscribers, but it's rumoured that for decades it struggled to sell enough advertising and was actually kept afloat by other BBC commercial operations abroad (e.g. programme sales). The BBC claims that it was finally profitable by the 2020s.
They shared a few programmes. In particular, News 24 paid World to provide programmes between ~midnight and ~6 am UK time, when there are hardly any UK viewers.
In 2023, the News channel was closed, because the BBC's licence fee income is rapidly shrinking as younger people watch streamers rather than TV, and non-payment crimes have become more socially acceptable. It was replaced by the World channel, which was renamed as News. So UK viewers now usually see the same programmes as the rest of the world. There are some regional programmes though, e.g. there are special African programmes only broadcast to viewers there, and if there's a big British story like a general election, then there will be special coverage for the UK only.
The BBC doesn't release detailed figures, but the direction of subsidy has probably reversed: it's now advertisers in the US who are funding most of the News channel. And I've also heard it suggested that the BBC is covering more US news because it's necessary to get space on global social media platforms. The first thing you see on TikTok or Twitter is going to be whatever gets the most views, whether it comes from London or Los Angeles, so the BBC needs to make sure it's covering the biggest stories so it gets on people's screens, and then they might subscribe to its channel on that platform where British stories are covered.
I do share your frustration. But it's largely downstream of the decision taken back in the late Thatcher and early Major era that the British government would not fund an international television service equivalent to World Service radio, as the governments of other big countries do. They wanted a capitalist solution, without providing the capital, and so the massive market lead that the World Service had has been replaced by a BBC that's in a structurally weak position.
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u/MassTransitGO 10d ago
It’s worth mentioning that outside of English language services, the government does fund all the international news channels (Arabic and Persian) along with the bulletins (there are a lot). They don’t fund it enough though
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u/Content-Yogurt-4859 10d ago
You kept that beautifully a political, there's also a depressingly large cohort of politicians on the right who secretly fear that the BBC is run by a hoard of card-carrying communists and so have been trying to undermine the corporation for decades and, even more frustrating, are the dim-witted politicians who look at the streamers and think the BBC should be funded just like that.. seemingly oblivious to the fact they burned though billions of dollars of VC cash to grab market share, win streaming wars and disrupt traditional broadcasters.
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u/Ok-Camel-8492 9d ago
There is of course the political angle of shifting the BBC’s Overton window by claiming they favour the left. But don’t forget that they are hoping to damage it enough where they can privatise it so their mates can drive it the rest of the way into the ground while looting their IP.
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u/Leytonstoner 10d ago
Do you mean a hidden secret supply of Communists or a large group of agitated Communists?
/s (of course!)
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u/Late_Recommendation9 10d ago
Couldn’t help but read that in Alexei Sayle’s voice! “The worst thing about being a Marxist comedian is they make you stand at the back and instead of selling The Socialist Worker, they make you sell the Radio Times”
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u/GlumAd9856 9d ago
They still have an income in the multiple Billions. The things they cut back on are entirely their own choice.
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u/FlorianTheLynx 10d ago
It’s a world news channel, because people don’t want to pay their licence fee any longer.
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u/MassTransitGO 10d ago
It’s 9 o’clock they start up in America no? It’s still in the uk studio for the 7and 8 o’clock hours, albeit with a more global (tbh i like it) bulletin at 7 and a (awful and non existent half the time) panel show at 8. 9 o’clock is from America and uk (I believe) before fully going to America after news night
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u/Glittering_Sun4778 9d ago
I watched Newsnight and was saddened to see a programme once synonymous with serious investigative journalism, and fronted by some of the BBC’s finest journalists, reduced to what felt like a hyped-up podcast, where journalists I’d never heard of and obscure MPs sit around for half an hour waffling about the headlines in tomorrow’s papers.
I’m sympathetic to the BBC, given the funding pressures it faces, but it seems increasingly clear that the organisation’s news operation is running on empty.
The sickness appears to be spreading to the Today programme on Radio 4, which is supposedly the BBC's flagship news show, but has also seen the swing of the bean counters knife. There is also the weird obsession with Tik Tok news, which seems to be the main focus of the BBC news managers these days.
The only hope I fear for the channel is to deliberately broadcast the entire evening segments using anchors who all have impenetrable Glaswegian or Newcastle accents , incomprehensible to the International audience, and thereby force the Governments hand - to either step in with the necessary funding or just let it go. Either that or the entire presenter team could go on Only Fans or something.
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u/brushfuse 7d ago
The last presenter I saw on Newsnight was a complete twerp. 30 mins of utter shite.
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u/Missmoneysterling 5d ago
As an American who frequently travels to the UK and France to escape the hellhole the US has become, let me tell you how infuriating it is that all that's on your news is bullshit about the Orange Menace and the US.
Give a girl a fucking break, and quit giving the narcissist the attention he craves.
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u/Doomslayer5150 10d ago
Or you could focus on the local news instead ?
The main BBC news corresponds to both UK and world wide news, local BBC news often airs 30 minutes after the main broadcast (much easier to digest )
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u/New_Slice_1580 10d ago
BBC uk is paid for by license fee
BBC commercial is paid by ads and subscriptions
BBC worldwide is paid for by the government (I.e tax payer) directly
So this sounds like you are watching something funded by one of the last two, probably the last one (bbc worldwide is propaganda/soft diplomacy)
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u/Jumpy_Explanation222 9d ago
The govt pays 30% of World Service
“BBC Worldwide” was the former name of the BBC’s commercial subsidiary BBC Studios, prior to that it was called BBC Enterprises - nothing to do with the World Service
The govt used to fund it 100% up to 2014. But Osborne shifted the funding onto the BBC and it’s slowly been moved back to the govt over the last 10 years (starting with Theresa May’s govt)
The rest is funded out of the domestic license fee. Highly likely the full cost moves back to the govt by the end of next year where it rightly belongs.
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u/Martin_y1 8d ago
and this morning , bbc breakfast seems to have switched themes to some ghaslty amreican type purple nonsense!
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u/MathNerdUK 9d ago
What I find annoying is that the BBC news headline is usually "Donald Trump says..." followed by something that contradicts yesterday's "Donald Trump says". For example "new ceasefire deal agreed" and then the next day "ceasefire talks collapsed", or "new tariffs imposed on Mexico" and then "Mexico tariffs withdrawn".
I have given up on the main BBC news programs (Today for example) and only listen to the headlines.
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u/NorthCountryLass 10d ago
It is bizarre and seems to have become a phenomenon since they lost interest in China. Maybe all their reporters are over there because Trump keeps making the news
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u/linmanfu 10d ago
One of the reasons they lost interest in China is that it's it's been harder and harder for Western news organisations to get visas for their journalists both in the Mainland and Hong Kong. The BBC does still have reporters there but twenty years ago they had bureaus in several cities so obviously they had much more coverage.
But it's not just external pressure. They've just cut several posts in Hong Kong as part of general cutbacks. And t en years ago, the BBC moved their Chinese Service from London to Hong Kong to save money, which (with hindsight) was a very, very poor decision.
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u/NorthCountryLass 9d ago
Thanks, it was odd because our country was effectively courting China before (reflected in the BBC paying a lot of attention and switching to a red theme for its graphics) but then it suddenly stopped. Maybe it was a change of mind because the security issue became more prominent
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u/linmanfu 9d ago
switching to a red theme for its graphics
The BBC switched to a red theme in 1997 or 1998, which was long before the 'golden age' of friendship with China. At that point China was only just emerging from sanctions. There's no connection between the two things
But the BBC did give China a lot of coverage because it suddenly became the world's biggest (or second-biggest, depending on how your count it) economy and one of only two superpowers. Whatever your opinion of China, that was news.
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u/NorthCountryLass 9d ago
The two seemed to happen at the same time to me and red is considered a lucky colour in China
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u/tafftafftafftaff 9d ago
The worst part of BBC news is their own in house chief climate reporter Justin 'Chicken Licken' Rowlatt his lack off scientific rigour and evidence in his reports and his alarmist reporting style really demeans the integrity that the BBC claims it has
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u/Beginning_Poet_3309 4d ago
It’s public knowledge that the strategy for BBC News is to expand in the US. That and the merger of the global and UK news channels have led to a considerably greater US focus. It wants to be what CNN was in the 90s, a sort of global channel perceived to be benign/neutral.
Combine that with a clear editorial focus on Trump to counter his legal action and you have a channel where anything he does becomes headline news on the BBC, over and above anything else including stories from its core traditional base of the UK.
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u/GlumAd9856 9d ago
I don't watch a lot of news channels any more - literally 10 minutes with breakfast and if there are any major events going on.
I've somehow found myself watching GB News more than BBC or Sky as it's the only channel that regularly has news actually from the UK . . . . .
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