Another hectic day for the BBC News channel yesterday. More Boris Johnson – there’s always more Johnson; more charting the twists and turns of a government in a downward spiral; more on Prince Harry and the royal true-life drama; more on protests in Greece and military spending in China; more on a historic deal to protect the oceans. All slickly and calmly done, this is the BBC, but the backdrop is turmoil.
Coming at a time of great political and technological upheaval, when viewers, especially young ones, are losing faith in journalism, the pressure is on for the launch of the new BBC News channel in April. The revamped service will combine and replace BBC World News, aimed at international audiences and funded by adverts and subscriptions, and the BBC News channel, a domestic service funded by the licence fee. The ancestors of the two channels were established in a blizzard of channel launches in the 1990s – a time when they said things could only get better.
