- published: 31 Mar 2014
- views: 51183
The BBC News at Six is the evening news programme broadcast each night on British television channel BBC One and the BBC News channel at 18:00. For a long period the News at Six was the most watched news programme in the UK but since 2006 it has been over taken by the BBC News at Ten. On average it pulls in 4 million viewers.
George Alagiah is currently the main presenter, presenting Monday to Thursday, while Fiona Bruce is its Friday presenter. Other BBC News presenters, including Sophie Raworth, Huw Edwards and Mishal Husain also appear.
In late 2007 the length of the programme was shortened from 30 minutes to 28 minutes to allow for a news summary being shown on BBC 1 at 7:58pm.
The programme launched on 3 September 1984, replacing early evening news magazine Sixty Minutes and was originally presented by Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell. Both presenters have since moved on to other positions within BBC News and the BBC itself. Jeremy Paxman, who went on to present Newsnight in 1989, was relief newsreader from 10 September.
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage. The service maintains 44 foreign news bureaux and has correspondents in almost all of the world's 240 countries. Since 2004, the Director of BBC News has been Helen Boaden.
The department's annual budget is £350 million; it has 3,500 staff, 2,000 of whom are journalists. Through the BBC English Regions, BBC News has regional centres across England as well as national news centres in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. All regions and nations produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport programmes.
Radio and television operations are broadcast from BBC Television Centre in West London, though are due to move to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House in central London by 2013. Television Centre houses all domestic, global, and online news divisions within one main newsroom. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in Millbank in London.