However, in September 1999 the European Commission ruled against a complaint made by Sky News that the publicly funded channel was unfair and illegal under EU law.

Initially it was difficult to obtain a digital satellite or terrestrial receiver without a subscription to Sky or ONdigital respectively, but following the demise of ITV Digital in 2002 and the subsequent launch of Freeview, the channel started to become much more widely available and the BBC Governors' annual report for 2005/2006 reported that average audience figures for fifteen-minute periods had reached 8.6% in multichannel homes.

[14] The channel relocated, along with the remaining BBC News services at Television Centre, to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House on 18 March 2013 at 13:00 GMT.

Moving cameras in the newsroom form part of the top of the hour title sequence and are used at the start of weather bulletins.

[19] The BBC announced a new presenter lineup for the merged service in February 2023, led by Matthew Amroliwala, Christian Fraser, Yalda Hakim, Lucy Hockings, and Maryam Moshiri.

[23] In February 2024, Ben Brown, Geeta Guru-Murthy, and Anita McVeigh rejoined the news channel after a year off air as chief presenters.

[24][25] During the 2024 general election campaign, BBC News temporarily unwound the unified service, and reverted to broadcasting a domestic feed of rolling coverage from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, as well as an additional UK-specific bulletin at 11 p.m. following Newsnight.

The design of this ticker was slightly altered with the 2007 graphics redesign and from June turned red to indicate breaking news, as Newswatch reported viewers' confusion.

A new set of graphics, including a change to font style, was officially launched in July 2019 although it was broadcast in error up to a couple of months before.

This sting gained some notoriety in June 2017 when a technical error caused it to appear several times in a row, delaying the start of the BBC News at Ten.

[37] Usually the BBC News Channel crosses over to live events, such as press conferences, without using the sting and the presenter on air introduces what viewers are seeing.

During major breaking news events, the BBC News Channel has been broadcast on BBC One; examples of special broadcasts include the 11 September 2001 attacks, 7 July 2005 London bombings, the capture of Saddam Hussein, the death of Osama bin Laden and the death and funerals of Prince Philip and Elizabeth II.

The programme was made up mostly of interviews focusing on current affairs, and included a full paper review, a weather summary, and a news update at 09:00, 09:30 and 10:00.

At the weekend, the channel simulcasts most of Breakfast, but does not broadcast the BBC One news bulletins, but does carry Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

This included axing some bulletins and replacing them with Victoria Derbyshire and BBC Business Live with Sally Bundock and Ben Thompson in the morning.

As of March 2019[update] the main sports presenters on the channel are Olly Foster, Gavin Ramjaun, Katie Gornall, Chetan Pathak, Katherine Downes, Tulsen Tollett, Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes and John Watson.

Presenters for bulletins on the channel have included: Reshmin Chowdhury, Amanda Davies, Sean Fletcher, Matt Gooderick, Celina Hinchcliffe, Rachael Hodges, Damian Johnson, Adnan Nawaz and Olympic gold medallist turned journalist Matthew Pinsent.

There were two shifts, from 08:30 to 14:00 and 14:00 to 23:00, presented by Penny Haslam, Maryam Moshiri, Ben Thompson, Adam Parsons, Susannah Streeter, Joe Lynam, Sara Coburn or Sally Eden.

Rachel Horne is the main presenter from 13:30 to 18:00, with Vishala Sri-Pathma, Alice Baxter, Jamie Robertson, Aaron Heslehurst and Sally Bundock.

The bright design of the set was also blamed for this – one insider reportedly described it as a "car crash in a shower"[3] – and was subject to the network relaunch on 25 October 1999.

The similarity of main BBC News output was intended to increase the credibility of the channel as well as aiding cross-channel promotion.

The clock was originally placed to the left hand side of the channel name though following complaints that this could only be viewed in widescreen, it was moved to the right in February 2007.

Philip Hayton and Anna Jones were the first two presenters on the set, the relaunch of which had been put back a week due to previous power disruptions at Television Centre where the channel was based.

The new designs also featured a dynamic set of titles for the channel; the globe would begin spinning from where the main story was taking place, while the headline scrolled around in a ribbon; this was occasionally replaced by the BBC News logo.

Various images, originally ivory numbers fully animated against a deep red background, were designed to fit the pace of the channel, and the music soon gained notoriety, and was often satirised and parodied in popular culture.

The music was revised completely but the biggest change came in the footage used – reflecting the methods and nature of newsgathering, while a strong emphasis was placed on the BBC logo itself.

In production of the countdown sequence, Clive Norman filmed images around the United Kingdom, Richard Jopson in the United States, while BBC News camerapeople filmed images from Iraq, Beijing (Tiananmen Square), Bund of Shanghai, Africa, as well as areas affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami and others.

The sequence has since seen several remixes to the music and a change in visuals to focus more on the well-known journalists, with less footage of camera crews and production teams.

Also in 2008, the graphic for the countdown changed, resembling the BBC One Rhythm and Movement idents, due to the logo being in a red square in the bottom left corner.

A full three-minute version of the countdown music was made available on BBC News Online and David Lowe's own website after a remix on 16 May 2006.