Originally Posted by NeilVW:
“Not a very high bar to clear; having said that the news at 6.30 does quite well, with 20% share sometimes, despite being opposite strong regional news opposition on BBC One.”
Yes, the 6.30 news works pretty well for them, it's useful if you get home a bit late and obviously it builds up to a big audience who are tuning in ready for Emmerdale so it's quite a good showcase for the things they do. It's like how the Sunday teatime news used to be often the highest rated bulletin on any channel all week when it used to be on at 6.45 nine times out of ten before Emmerdale.
Originally Posted by Andy23:
“I can only assume they are doing it to get recognition and awards only, perhaps making it more analytical, more Newsnight-esque. Of course it won't get the ratings. I don't agree with it myself, but as ftv helpfully points out 3 times a week, News at Ten has been doing quite poorly lately and they presumably decided they needed to change something.”
Well, that's it, I suppose, there doesn't perhaps seem to be much point in going up against the BBC News with something that's exactly the same as the BBC News on at the same time. If you're going to come second then you may as well do something different and a bit more interesting and offer an obvious alternative. Whether this is it is another thing but you may as well have a go.
Of course when they brought back News at Ten in 2008 they made a big thing about it being its flagship bulletin so it looked different to all the other bulletins and it had its own set and theme (which I thought was all rather nice) but then not long after they decided to abandon all that and just make it look like all the other bulletins. Telly does tend to go round in circles, though (look at Sky Living for an example).
For what it's worth, I don't usually watch News at Ten, I don't really see the point when I know the BBC News is there and I like and know the BBC correspondents. This is not, of course, to say I'm watching it by DEFAULT because I genuinely prefer it and if the quality deterioriated I'd soon stop. I suppose it's one of those situations where the only revamp that would see a massive increase in News at Ten's ratings is a crap revamp of the BBC News.
I think it's a shame to see the end of double headed presentation on News at Ten because I always like that, I think it's a pity BBC News don't do it at six o'clock anymore. But there certainly used to be an obvious ITN way of doing thing that a lot of people liked, it had a familiar team and they had their distinct way of doing things and it was an obvious and often appealing alternative to the BBC. I don't know if it's got that these days so if this revamp does give the bulletin an obvious reason to exist and offers a genuine alternative to the Beeb which more people may find more appealling then I'm all for it, really, the more people finding a news service that appeals to them and watching the news on a regular basis the better.
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