Huw Edwards and the future of TV news anchors
Thoughts on TV News, journalism, and digital media. Issue#9
Welcome to my latest Substack newsletter. I’m a former TV news journalist, turned digital and media executive. In this edition: thoughts on Huw Edwards and news presenters, local newspapers and the UK riots, and cutbacks at the news platform Axios.
News Presenters
The story of the dramatic downfall of the BBC’s most senior newscaster was back in the news last week, with the BBC asking Huw Edwards to return the salary he had been paid after his arrest in November last year.
The BBC chair, Samir Shah, sent out an all-staff email describing the former newscaster as a “villain” who had “betrayed the trust of staff and our audiences in the most egregious possible way” while living a “double life”.
No doubt the Huw Edwards saga will return to the headlines next month when he is sentenced.
While this has gone on, I’ve been mulling over what impact all of this might have on the broader TV news business. Much has been written about the story, but one issue has had less focus - whether TV news flagship programmes and news specials should be fronted by a sole main presenter, like Huw Edwards, or a team of presenters and correspondents?
The live audiences for the evening programmes, on the legacy linear channels, are in steady decline, as viewers shift to getting news elsewhere, and are increasingly watching entertainment programmes in the evening on demand via the streaming platforms.
Looking across the news industry, there are, in my view, growing signs that as broadcast networks grapple with these falling ratings, TV news bosses are reassessing their views on the single news presenter issue.
I’m not the first person to see this trend. My former colleague John Ryley wrote an article in 2021 saying that the ‘age of the all-powerful anchor is gone’. And Andrew Billen in The Times asked the question in April this year: ‘Does the fall of Huw Edwards mark the end of the news anchor?’
Of course, many channels around the world are still opting for the single-presenter approach for their flagship news programme. In the UK, ITV News still has Tom Bradby as the main presenter on ITV News at Ten (a role he’s had for nearly ten years). He presents the ITV flagship and the network’s main news specials, such as the election results programme.
The BBC and CBS
For the BBC, there was speculation earlier in the year about who would replace Huw Edwards as the main presenter on News at Ten and other key programmes. Clive Myrie was seen by many as the front-runner, but others, such as Fiona Bruce and Victoria Derbyshire, were also in the frame.
But the BBC have yet to announce a single replacement. It was interesting that they chose a double-presenting team for their general election programme, with Clive Myrie and Laura Kuenssberg. Clare Balding replaced Huw Edwards on the Trooping the Colour annual programme. And a range of newscasters currently present the main BBC News at Ten programme.
In the US, CBS News has just announced that it will no longer have a sole presenter for their flagship Evening News programme after the move of Norah O’Donnell to other presenting roles, and will replace her with what it calls an ‘ensemble’ of top presenters and correspondents. Considering that CBS Evening News was the home of possibly the most famous sole presenter of all time, Walter Cronkite, this is clear evidence of a reset in the industry.
Upsides and downsides
The upsides of having a single respected and popular presenter in the increasingly fragmented media world are obvious. Building the programme around a single person can help create loyalty and recognition.
But… there are downsides.
As an organisation, you are putting all your presenting eggs in one basket – and this can harm your reputation and brand if your main presenter is publicly disgraced, as with Huw Edwards, leaves for other reasons, or, indeed, is poached by a rival.
Also, it’s increasingly difficult to stand out as an anchor. The news media marketplace has never been more crowded with well-known presenters. Quite frankly, high-profile names are popping up all over the place on news-related outlets, on YouTube, podcasts, as well as TV programmes. In the video and TV news business, we are very much in the era of the ubiquitous celebrity news presenter.
Trevor McDonald
Taking a step back, UK news programmes haven’t always had a single presenter. I was Deputy Editor of ITV News when we made the decision to make Trevor McDonald the sole presenter of ITV News at Ten in 1993. I was on a visit to New York with the then Editor of ITN News on ITV, David Mannion, when the announcement was about to be made, and I was given the job of ringing some of the ITN newscasters who hadn’t been selected for the new role. They weren’t the easiest of conversations!
It was a bold decision at the time, because for the 25 or so years before that, ITN had been famous for its nightly double-presenting team, drawn from a roster of household-name presenters, such as Reggie Bosanquet, Alastair Burnet, and Anna Ford.
With Trevor, the single anchor approach worked well. Research and audience feedback showed that he was seen as authoritative and approachable, respected and friendly. A great mixture for a TV presenter. But Trevor was a one-off.
The future
TV news programmes on linear channels around the world are having to adapt to the changing media environment. Part of that is weighing the pros and cons of building their evening flagship TV news programme around a single, named presenter.
Given the downsides, it may be smarter in this new, jostling, elbow-nudging, multi-presenter world, to promote their news brand, rather than a single person. Get people to watch BBC News at Ten, for example, for the quality of its impartial output and its team of expert correspondents, not just for who happens to be presenting it.
Most assume that the BBC will announce a replacement for Huw Edwards at some stage. But recent events could well encourage BBC news bosses to think twice about creating a direct replacement with an all-powerful sole presenter. They may opt for a more flexible solution.
Other Media News
In other media developments in the past week, the Behind Local News newsletter team produced a really useful summary on Substack and Medium of how local and regional newspapers in the UK covered the riots that followed the Southport stabbings. It included an article with the headline: ‘10 days we’ll never forget: Front pages from around the UK’.
The Behind Local News Substack said that these stories from the frontline “remind us why local journalism matters” - particularly in countering online disinformation:
“Local journalists are well-versed in covering breaking news in real-time these days. But the last 10 days has thrown into sharp focus the role local journalism plays in fighting disinformation in real-time too.”
Local newspapers have obviously suffered in the last 20 years. The Press Gazette has just published its latest update on local journalism, saying that 293 local newspapers have closed in the UK since 2005. So, it was heartening to see that despite this decline, the local newspaper sector was still able to cover the riots with distinctive front pages and strong eye-witness reporting.
Cutbacks at Axios
The other story that caught my attention last week was the announcement that the online news outlet Axios is laying off 10% of its staff. I really like the Axios ‘Smart Brevity’ approach, and their USP of explaining news stories in bullet point form, under headings such as ‘Why it matters’, ‘Zoom in’, ‘Between the lines’, and ‘Yes, but’.
With so much else to read, often long-form or long-read articles, it’s refreshing to see clear and to-the-point writing.
Saying that, I like a lot of the other new innovative news platforms, as well! Tortoise, The News Movement, Semafor and so on. And therein lies the problem. Online news media for upscale, engaged readers has become an incredibly crowded space, and we may well be reaching a subscription saturation point. Last week’s announcement from Axios shows that even the well-funded and well-thought-out digital news organisations are facing challenges.
In his email to staff announcing the cutbacks, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei used strong words to describe what’s happening to the media.
He said the company needed to “get ahead of tectonic shifts” and that “we’re making some difficult changes to adapt fast to a rapidly changing media landscape”. He wrote that reader attention is “scattering across social, podcasts, individual creators and influencers, partisan websites and more” and that this along with AI models’ ability to summarise news, means we are facing “the most difficult moment for media in our lifetime”.
I wish Axios and the other digital newcomers well, and genuinely hope they both survive and thrive in this testing commercial environment. But I fear that these digital news platforms are getting squeezed by, on the one hand, legacy media publications providing newly energised and strong subscription offerings, and, on the other hand, by individual freelance writers offering well-written, niche and carefully targeted newsletters and content.
Quote of the Week: ‘Journalism has become an elite sport’
Former ITN programme editor, and AP and then Reuters senior executive, Sue Brooks has just been appointed Chair of the UK press training organisation, the NCTJ. In a media statement about her new job, she talked about the difficulties getting into journalism now, compared to when she started:
"For a 17-year-old Derbyshire lass with a handful of ‘O’ levels, a dream of working in Fleet Street was completely attainable in 1977… Could this happen in 2024? NCTJ research suggests not and, in the 40+ years since I joined the industry, journalism has become an elite sport."
Interesting Links
Trump and X
Poynter’s take on the Elon Musk interview with Donald Trump.
Trump’s campaign documents
Good summary by AP of the Trump campaign leak.
CNN and Mark Thompson
A long but insightful analysis from the CJR.
Follow-up
In last week’s newsletter, I ended with a story about how the ITN archive team has just discovered what they think is the earliest film recording of an ITN bulletin - from 1956. Well, the latest email from the archive team to clients and staff has another interesting story about how 6,000 un-catalogued videotapes have been delivered to London from the ITN South African bureau.
Obviously, any video report that the bureau sent to London over the years would have been entered into the ITN library, but these are the original rushes - containing thousands of hours of film of key news events, such as Mandela's release, the Mozambique floods, and the Zola Budd story.
I love the idea that a lot of content that hasn’t been seen for decades can now be properly catalogued, digitised and preserved.
Feedback
I’ve had some interesting feedback on items in recent newsletters.
Memories in the July 28th edition of Mike Nicholson’s 1974 exclusive report of Turkish troops landing in Cyprus (in which he famously said, “My name’s Nicholson. How do you do?”), led to a number of responses. On LinkedIn, Matt Walsh, now Head of Journalism at Cardiff University, wrote:
“I remember the first time I watched this legendary piece of reporting - not at the time, as I was only two years old in 1974. I was making a taster reel for an ITN project celebrating 50 years of the company. It was literally jaw-dropping. Brave and original reporting like this was one of the many reasons I was proud to work at ITN.”
Another former ITN journalist, Rosie Hayes, said she remembered the congratulatory scenes when Mike arrived back in the newsroom after the Cyprus assignment. But perhaps the nicest comment was Charlotte Hammond writing to say that her Dad, Bob Hammond, was the sound recordist working with Michael Nicholson on the story.
On a different note, the Dunblane discussion in the last newsletter sparked an email exchange with one of ITN’s top programme editors from the 1980s and 90s, Phil Moger. We talked about what a dreadful event it was. He was the programme editor of the Early Evening News on that tragic day. He said the main package was finished so close to the bulletin, that it had to be played into the programme in two parts, with the ENG editor and studio control room somehow managing to run them so that the report went out seamlessly.
It’s good to get feedback on these events that are now part of the history of TV News. It makes the newsletter worth doing.