The landscape of cable news is changing. With Chris Licht now running CNN under a mandate from new parent company Warner Bros. Discovery to avoid partisan commentary and return the channel to its more journalistic roots, many networks believe that the majority of the public craves unbiased reporting in these increasingly polarized times. To that point, CNN is not the only network looking to bring a more serious and sober approach to the news to audiences as the BBC has announced that it will roll up its existing U.K.-based BBC News channel and the U.S.-based BBC Global News into a single channel next spring.
Simply called BBC News, the channel will become available worldwide in April 2023 and will operate out of the channel’s London studios during U.K. daytime hours before moving operations to Washington D.C. and Singapore the rest of the day.
While the consolidation will mean a 70-person reduction in the BBC News staff in London, 20 jobs will be added in the United States. Deadline reports that the channel will focus less on anchors and news presenters, and instead will rely more heavily on correspondents to bring stories directly to viewers.
While the channel will remain commercial-free in the U.K., it will include commercials in the U.S. and internationally.
“Our aim is to create the best live and breaking video news service in the world – on our web pages, our apps, on BBC iPlayer and on our new TV news channel,” BBC News digital director Naja Nielsen said according to Deadline. “The way audiences consume news is changing.”
While CNN’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed domestically in recent years, it remains a trusted brand internationally. Earlier this year, the network attempted to introduce the additive CNN+ streaming service, only to have the experiment last less than a month as Warner Bros. Discovery shut down the service almost immediately after officially acquiring WarnerMedia. However, CNN International remains an important component of the network’s operations, broadcasting from Atlanta, New York City, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi. Similar to BBC News in the U.K., in some countries, CNN International is available as a free, over-the-air channel.
Fox News also launched an international channel after the network was pulled from the U.K.’s Sky cable provider in 2017 by 21st Century Fox — at the time, Fox Corporation owned 39% of Sky. The network’s U.S.-focused programming was reportedly generating only a few thousand viewers per day in the U.K. at the time.
If the consolidation of BBC’s news channels leads to a more competitive environment for traditional reporting and journalism in the U.S., that can only be good for viewers and the country at large.