BBC Six O'Clock News

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BBC Six O'Clock News

Genre	News, Weather
Creator(s)	BBC News
Presenter(s)	George Alagiah Natasha Kaplinsky
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC One
Original run	September 1984 – present
Chronology
Preceded by	Sixty Minutes
Related shows	BBC Breakfast, BBC One O'Clock News, BBC Ten O'Clock News

The BBC Six O'Clock News is the evening news programme broadcast daily on British television channel BBC One and BBC News 24 from 6:00pm until 6:30pm.

1 History
2 Presenters
3 Presentation
4 Criticism
5 See also
6 References
7 External link

The programme launched in September 1984 replacing early evening news magazine Sixty Minutes and was presented by Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell. Both presenters have since moved on to other positions within BBC News and the BBC itself.

In 1999, the bulletin was relaunched with the rest of the BBC's television news programmes and was presented by Huw Edwards, now main presenter of the Ten O'Clock News.

George Alagiah and Sophie Raworth took over in January 2003. When Raworth when on maternity leave in 2004, Sian Williams stood in for her for over six months. But for Sophie Raworth's second maternity leave at the end of 2005, Natasha Kaplinsky stood in which was announced in a BBC Press release and on the BBC News website (this didn't happen during Raworth first maternity leave) It was thought Sophie would return to the Six O'Clock news once her maternity leave ended but Kaplinsky was confirmed as full-time presenter in April 2006. Sophie Raworth is now presenter of the One O'Clock News. Since April 2005, the programme has formed the first section of the Six O'Clock Newshour on BBC News 24. The subsequent half hour consists of business and sport updates presented from within the News 24 studio. The news hour splits off to regional news programmes on BBC One, returning at 18:55 for the main news headlines though national programmes for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not do so.

Natasha Kaplinsky and George Alagiah presenting the first bulletin in the newly designed set.

George Alagiah - co-anchor since 2003
Natasha Kaplinsky - co-anchor since 2005
Sian Williams - relief presenter
Dermot Murnaghan - relief presenter
Jane Hill - relief presenter
Ben Brown - relief presenter

Former presenters since 1999
Huw Edwards - former anchor from 1999-2003 (now anchor of the Ten O'Clock News)
Fiona Bruce - former deputy anchor from 1999-2003 (now deputy anchor of the Ten O'Clock News)
Sophie Raworth - former co-anchor from 2003-2005 (now anchor of the BBC One O'Clock News)
Bill Turnbull - former regular stand-in

Former presenters 1993-1999

Martyn Lewis - main anchor
Anna Ford - main anchor
Peter Sissons - main anchor
Andrew Harvey - co-anchor
Jennie Bond - co-anchor
Jill Dando - co-anchor
Moira Stuart - co-anchor

As with the rest of BBC News bulletins on BBC One, the bulletin is based within studio N6 of BBC Television Centre. The current design of set was introduced with new graphics and titles on 2 May 2006; another redesign of graphics and titles to coincide with a refresh of BBC News 24 was introduced on 22 January 2007.

BBC News theme 2007 excerpt (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- An excerpt from the BBC News Theme 2007 by David Lowe
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Within the last few minutes of each bulletin, a full national weather forecast is presented by Alex Deakin, Peter Gibbs, Daniel Corbett, Jay Wynne or Carol Kirkwood of the BBC Weather Centre.

The bulletin has been accused of being an example of the BBC 'dumbing-down' with more consumer led reports and dynamic presentation. In particular, the Commons leader Jack Straw berated the show's presenters for "prancing around the studio" ^[1]

The BBC defend the format as they believe that the body language and integration of presenter and graphics increases the viewer's understanding of the news.^[2]