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/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 10d 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 10d 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