Monday’s relaunch of the BBC News at One is high stakes. If it goes wrong for any reason, there could be serious repercussions.
The programme is both an important public service responsibility and the BBC’s most-watched daytime programme.
It routinely attracts 2m viewers and often gains more, especially if there is a big story or If bad weather keeps people off work.
The revamp means a number of changes:
- The programme moves to Salford, joining BBC Breakfast.
- The format will change, with the programme running for an hour in total – including the 10-minute regional opt.
- Some of the regular presenters are changing.
- Publicity suggests the programme will be presented from the Breakfast sofa but with a virtual newsroom backdrop.
The move to Salford in itself should not be a problem.
The success of Breakfast and 5 Live demonstrates that national news programmes need not be presented from London.
What matters is where reporters are working. They are not affected by the change.
The question of the format is a different one though.
There are two audiences for the BBC News at One: people who switch on to watch the lunchtime news, perhaps on their break, and people at home all day who may watch other afternoon programmes.
The regional opt will happen at approximately the established time of 1.35pm.
This suggests the plan is to keep the format and content of the first half of the programme pretty much as before.
It would be a mistake not to.
The question then is what should happen during the last 15 minutes.
The expectation is that we will see more of the human and regional stories which work well on Breakfast. But if the regional news opt provides some punctuation to the programme, they will be clearly separated from the main news of the day.
It could be hard to judge the content properly over the next few weeks though – especially as the election campaign intensifies.
Will the extra time simply include the sort of stories which might have been squeezed out?
Some may wonder about the wisdom of using the Breakfast sofa for an actual news bulletin.
Let’s see how it looks. But, of course, many regional programmes have done this for years.
The extension to the One also has implications for the rest of BBC One daytime.
Along with the recent extensions to Breakfast and Morning Live, there’s now an extra hour of live daytime output on BBC One each day – or, to put it another way, an hour less of other material to commission.
Doctors has already ceased production and will finally come off air towards the end of the year. (It will be taking its normal summer break shortly.)
BBC One daytime is a success story – in no small measure because of Breakfast and the News at One.
The tabloids have been full of stories claiming the future of This Morning on ITV 1 is in doubt. Yet few have celebrated the BBC’s achievements – a far cry from the early 90s when the BBC’s daytime ratings were so diabolical that some might have questioned whether original mid-morning TV was a waste of resources.
The News at One wins three times the audience of the ITV Lunchtime News.
This revamp must build on that success. It is too important a programme to compromise.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: BBC News at One studio in Salford. COPYRIGHT: BBC.