I caught up with some recorded episodes of The Chase last night. At least, that’s what I tried to do. The first of them seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to start. Twenty minutes to be precise. The reason? An extended news “special” about the flooding. Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not belittling the suffering of the many flooded households, or suggesting that their plight is in any way less important than watching the gogglebox. Just why does the news coverage of those events have to be so ubiquitous and invasive? This was an unscheduled news bulletin with extended on-the-spot coverage less than two hours before we’d be able to see the whole thing again in the scheduled bulletin.

Not only that, but Auntie’s news-mad schedulers then decided that since they were showing some news anyway, they might as well throw in footage of the day’s sporting fixtures too. A bit of football; a minute or so of the Grand Prix. To add insult to injury, already almost twenty minutes late starting the scheduled broadcast, they snuck in a quick trailer for some programme that’s on later in the week! News is already available 24 hours a day on Freeview and even the most dedicated anti-digital viewer is only a couple of hours away from a news bulletin on one channel or other during prime time. How arrogant to behave as if the only news worth watching is BBC News, and to believe that a majority of viewers prefer to have their evening’s entertainment interrupted when they’ll be able to see the exact same recorded coverage later in the evening.