I have a piece at the Guardian today reviewing the Beeb’s revamp of its international newscast, The World – now World News Today (World News Tonight already belonging to ABC). Basically, the UK scheduling puts this up against Britain’s equivalent of NewsHour, and that’s got people asking why the BBC is duplicating something already offered under a UK public service remit at the same time.

This is how the revamp was described by Richard Porter at the BBC website – read the comments below his piece to get a sense of how some committed UK viewers feel:

* Simon: And the benefit of scheduling it so it clashes with Channel 4 News is…?

* David: Shame it now clashes with C4 News. I liked the 8pm slot, but now when I get in from work at 7 I’ll still turn to C4 News for an overall briefing. In the old slot I then turned over if there was something in the international field that I wanted to know more about.

* Spot: This seems more about re-branding and putting something up against C4’s excellent and established news.

* Tom: I have to agree with what people have said here – C4 news is the finest news programme on television, and I’m always going to watch that rather than this – why make them clash – I’m sure they’re both aimed at similar audiences, but you’re not going to win against the superb C4N

* Paul: Like others, I cannot understand why you would put this up against Channel 4 News.

* Peter: Similar to some of the other commenters, it’s a shame this is on at 7pm UK time. I had just started getting into The World at 8pm, after an hour of Channel 4 News. Some serious news reporting, rather than the knockabout pantomime that is the BBC 6 O’Clock News.

* Scott: Baffled that you should put this on at the same time as C4 news. If you want to compete with C4’s excellent political coverage – which The World at 8pm certainly did – try making ‘Newsround at 6’ a bit less silly. This will only split the audience.

IMO, if World News Today had the resources of BBC1’s news programmes, I’d feel less like this was public service for peanuts.

By the way, to add to your confusion the newscast runs with World Business Report at an hour on international service BBC World, and at just half an hour on UK digital channel, BBC4.