No more Swanky Hanky Panky

She's only herself to blame, I'm afraid. Fiona Bruce's penchant for cocktails at the Langham when she's presenting both the 6pm and 10pm bulletins on dull old BBC1 will soon be at an end. The Harding Hammer has landed on the hiring of second XI newsreaders to deliver the network's 8pm News Squirt.

Dedicated presenter for 8pm BBC One news update to go. ‘We plan to cover this within our wider presenter rota’ - presenters of Six and Ten?
— Neil Midgley (@NeilMidgley) July 17, 2014

Three heads are better..

Ah, Delivering Quality First in BBC Drama: replace Kate Harwood, the Head of Drama who left in March to revive Euston Films, with three people.

Hilary Salmon will be based in London, Hilary Martin in Salford, and a third person will join them, provided the headhunters can find another Hilary.

"Despite the creation of additional roles, the [Ben] Stephenson and Mark Freeland (controller of fiction and entertainment) devised restructure is not expected to increase overall headcount", says staff website Ariel.

But I'll take a small wager the three salaries together outstrip Ms Harwood's £209k package,,,,

• Ms Salmon features in a BBC training video from 2013, on the topic of producing clear sound in tv drama, presumably unwatched by the people who made Jamaica Inn and Quirke. 

Hocchi Cocchi

A high-living chum enquires about cocktails at the Langham Hotel, after Fiona Bruce tells the Radio Times that she occasionally takes one, "just one", when she's reading both the 6pm and 10pm BBC News bulletins. Here's the current, award-winning selection at the hotel's Artesian Bar.

At £16.50, they're all above the BBC expenses limit for dinner away-from-base - and the Langham isn't far enough from Broadcasting House to trigger a claim.  Personally I'll now have to avert my gaze when Fiona's on the Ten, telling me more and more about some useless information, when she may well have downed a Swanky Hanky Panky.

Bustin' out all over

Meanwhile, June has not been a good month for local Lebedev service London Live. BARB report that the highest station figures for the week ending the 22 June went to episodes of Peep Show and London's Burning - returning 12,000 viewers each.

Master of Puppets

Turned on BBC2 last night to see that the whacky Top Gear production team had been at it again. Give those zany presenters a bunch of guitars, bring their regular audience on stage, and see if you can fool 70,000 people in a muddy field.  Bravo, BBC.

Speak up

BBC DG Lord Hall may prefer to support his 300-odd Glastonbury troops from home, but he wasn't far away yesterday. He popped in to the National Trust's Barrington Court, some 25 miles south of Worthy Farm, to watch shooting of Wolf Hall.

The six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novel stars Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. The visit was gushingly welcomed by director Peter Kosminsky, but he may have tweeted before being issued with a set of anti-mumbling guidelines....

Thirty five years making television programmes and such a thing has never happened before. Leadership. #wolfhall
— Peter Kosminsky (@kosmoSFL) June 27, 2014

That's Enough

Daniel Cass's company, That's TV, has added three more local licences to his existing pair, That's Solent and That's Oxford. So we get That's Surrey (Guildford), That's Salisbury, and That's Reading.

A flavour of the programming, from Reading: That's Reading Tonight, That's Your Say, That's Music, That's Sport, That's Kids, That's Nature, That's Sunday, That's Exclusive and news provided by graduates from the That's Reading Journalism Degree Course at Reading University, plus 100 That's TV-trained volunteers who've completed the That's Citizen Journalists course.

That's TV bid to run That's Basingstoke is pending.

Original British Columbian Drama

And so, as BBC TV boss Danny Cohen bigs up Original British Drama against overrated US Box Sets, BBC Worldwide announces the US premiere of Intruders, with the look and feel of a Box Set To Come. It's about "a secret society devoted to chasing immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others", and stars British-morose-specialist John Simm as a former LAPD cop with "a troubled and violent history", seeking tranquillity in the "moody Pacific Northwest" with wife Mia Sorvino.

I'm sure Danny'll find space in his schedules somewhere...

Senior Ed

Ed Campbell, ITVs Senior News Editor, is joining the BBC news team, alongside his Oxford University contemporary Lucy Manning. He'll be called Editor, Special Correspondents.

I suddenly have lots of new twitter followers for some reason...
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) June 17, 2014

..and more viewers for his work, on screen, behind the scenes and on social media.

Indescribably boring report on #newsnight on #fracking. How I wish they'd go back to the good old days of libelling Former cabinet ministers
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) June 27, 2013

White Heat appears to be totally up it's own arse, typically smug BBC shite. How disappointing.
— Ed Campbell (@edcampbell71) March 8, 2012

How tv works...

The Crimson Field, the BBC1 WW1 field hospital saga, is not coming back. Its six episodes all rated above 6m viewers - the creators had plans for stories over the next three years of centenary-marking. A BBC spokesperson said "In order to create space for new shows and to keep increasing the variety of BBC One drama, it will not be returning for a second series".

Ripper Street, the BBC1 gaslight cop saga, dropped to audiences below 5m for its second series, and, with co-funders BBC America, Auntie pulled the plug. Now, after Amazon Video decided to invest, filming has re-started in Dublin. "This is an exceptional opportunity to bring back Ripper Street for a third series by working with the right partners", said BBC tv drama boss Ben Stephenson.

Original British Drama, chosen 'cos it's cheaper?  Entertainingly, the BBC Trust yesterday published draft guidelines about commercial relationships.

Unnatural order

It's getting a bit rufty-tufty in BBC News under James Harding.

Sports Editor David Bond has left; Religious Affairs Correspondent Robert Piggott is going back to general reporting; Caroline Wyatt moves in from the Defence brief.

Now Tom Giles has been shifted from his role as Editor of Panorama, to what looks like "a special project", beloved of the BBC when needing to oil the wheels of job movement. From June, for six months, the programme will be run by Ceri Thomas, currently Head of News Programmes, on a package of £166k. This will produce an entertaining organogram where Ceri reports via his current Deputy, Jim Gray, who also holds the title of Head of TV Current Affairs, on a package of £155k.

Biding

Piers Morgan seems in relaxed mood, during his current hiatus at CNN. He says he still has a contract, despite losing the weeknight show, and will be back on the network in some form.

A fan of schadenfreude, he will have noticed that, if the 9pm Eastern Standard Time slot was doing badly under his watch, it's tanking further without a regular host. Last week, in the hands of former ABC presenter Bill Weir, the show recorded scores of 96k, 100k, 71k, 89k and 48k in the 25-to-54 age group of US viewers. The network dropped from 37th position in the overall primetime cable network rankings, to 41st.

Network boss Jeff Zucker, meanwhile, faced CNN staff for a session of pre-submitted questions and answers. An Atlanta-based producer asked why managers fear him and are on “pins and needles’ when he comes up with ideas.

"I thought that was going to be Piers Morgan‘s question", said Jeff, "I don’t want anyone to feel like that. I want people to push back on me.… I throw out a lot of ideas and you know, honestly, half of them are crazy and you should ignore. I think the thing is to recognize and be confident in your own judgment… I do need to think about when we have our morning editorial meetings and I say I like something, then 10 shows go off and say we gotta do that. That is an issue.."

An issue, sometimes, in big licence-fee funded news organisations closer to home.

Jitters

Twitchy times for people in tv news. London Live's latest highest audience was 28,000 - for a comedy show that started on Youtube. If you can't make an impact with cash and a free newspaper with a print run of 900,000 and a readership of around 1.7m, what chance for the stations yet to launch around the UK ?

Meanwhile, the "newsier" Good Morning Britain dropped 60,000 viewers for Day 2, to an average of 740,000.

At the BBC News Festival, former BBC Director of News, Richard Sambrook, was there as his thesis, that 24 hour tv news channels have had their day, was put to the current Director of News, James Harding - tellingly, according to Ian Burrell of the Independent, he said he would “personally” like it to continue - but he needed to deliver a further £20 million of cuts to the BBC News budget. Asked if the News Channel would be merged with the international BBC World News service, Mr Harding said he would expect the two to get “much closer”.

The next day former Deputy Director of News, Richard Ayre, now a Trustee, was there, as Harding responded to the Trust's requirement to do more for less, with a budget set by a Director General who was also once Director of News (supported by Richard).  The Trust adjudged that, under previous management, News had made savings of £40m over three years "without causing significant damage to output"; that, if more widely-circulated, will ring to hollow laughter in Dr Evil's Volcano News Lair and in local radio stations around the UK. They know what those three years felt like, and can do the maths required to reach £20m over the next two years.

Meanwhile, at Sky News, redundancy conversations are underway with a dozen jobs to go.

Busy

No dozing in the gallery for the new ITV breakfast show, Good Morning Britain. The four presenters tag team the news, and, if you're never sure who's popping up next, there were times when the studio director seemed just as uncertain. A high story count is inevitable for a first day, with new stories added to, rather than replacing the planned set pieces. At one stage, it looked like the longest items would be the ad breaks.

There's a slightly bizarre wish to categorize stories. As well as "Breaking News" - Sheffield house fire, we were treated to "New This Morning"  - embargoed story on nursery education for two-year-olds, "New overnight" - tornadoes in the USA, and "Developing" - the engagement, or not, of George Clooney, to a UK-based lawyer, first reported on Saturday.  No sign of the word "Plug" over One Direction's new video.

Still, if they can keep up the pace, they may make a dent in the BBC's dominance.

Low rider

Top media hack Neil Midgley got quite a bit of attention for his Forbes piece on the viewing figures for London Live. According to BARB, the three-hour breakfast show is averaging 2,400 viewers, and the evening news 4,000. On eight occasions, Wake Up London has broadcast for a full hour to no measurable audience – a BARB score of zero viewers.

London Live CEO Andrew Mullins has told The Guardian he believes the BARB panel within the capital is too small, creating an inbuilt bias, and under-recording their viewing by half. Their own calculations, looking at online viewing,Twitter trending and more, suggest a weekly reach of 1 million.

Out of interest, the top BARB rating for Russia Today in the week beginning April was "Boom Bust" at 17,000 viewers. BBC Parliament got 64,000 for an edition of Prime Minister's Question Time. NDTV's (New Delhi Television) top show was the Thursday evening bulletin, with 22,000. Euronews, perhaps wisely, doesn't return BARB figures for that week. Al Jazeera English returned 0 (zero) viewers for its top ten shows.

Saints alive !

Spare some religious fervour for next weekend as well.

The ceremony at which Pope Francis will raise predecessors Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII to sainthood will be transmitted live in 3D (and Ultra HD) - and the Vatican has turned to (the) Sky for some three-dimensional expertise.

Sky Italia is flying out a range of news hands from Osterley to help with calling the shots, with pictures provided by six stereo pairs of HD cameras and three HDCam cameras converted on the fly, supported by UK firm Telegenic. Sky News has previously seen Catholic ceremonial as a potential audience winner - internally, a proposal to offer a 24-hour "Pope Channel" during the 2010 visit by Benedict to England and Scotland got as far as working out whether it would be possible to leave a camera on windows of buildings where Il Papa was sleeping before someone saw sense.

White van men

There's often been scepticism that the BBC "detector vans" actually do the job - a suspicion that the equipment inside and on top of the old vehicles were props borrowed from early episodes of Dr Who. Now an FoI response confirms that the BBC has invented and manufactured gizmos that can find televisions in use - but can't exploit them commercially. That would require a patent - which would make public how they work - and allow licence-fee evaders a chance to work out how to block them.

In place of our advertised programme...

It's a bit like retiring the shirt. Piers Morgan's vacant slot on CNN, weekdays at 9pm ET, is to be filled long-term by film and documentaries.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker has declared 9pm to be the new home of  CNN’s Original Series, CNN Films and the network’s in-house produced documentaries like Dr Sanjay Gupta’s Weed and Anderson Cooper’s The Survivor Diaries.

At 10pm news returns with CNN Tonight, a live hour of the day’s biggest stories, presented by what the press release describes as "rotating hosts", which could be entertaining. Presumably they've got rotating autocue screens.

Succession planning

CNN's first stab at improving on Piers Morgan's figures isn't working quickly. Last week Michael Smerconish returned figures of 273k, 152k and 187k on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, in the 25 to 54 year-old demographic. He also announced himself as a "card-carrying member of Obamacare", which may or may not have helped...  Jeff Zucker may need to be more inventive.

Jenga

The BBC Trust has approved the Executive's plan to extend the catch-up window on iPlayer from seven days to 30 days - the change is expected to come this summer.

The increase in quantity means one significant loss - no more series stacking. This allows you the chance to watch or listen to an entire series, or the most recent thirteen episodes if the series exceeds this amount, until a week after the final episode is broadcast. The BBC could only offer this across 15% of "impact" first run output. So latecomers to sleeper hits will be driven into the arms of commercial online providers, Xmas box sets, if not to the soon-to-arrive BBC Store...

50% of people who currently use series-stacking will really miss it, according to research by Mediatique (of Little Portland Street).