New Sunday Politics studio means more choice for audience

BBC News NI's Sunday Politics show is getting a modern and fresh look with a new studio home.

The programme's first show from the new studio will be this weekend and the changes mean the audience will have more choice as the programme will be not only be shown live on BBC One NI, but for the first time will be broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster and Foyle.

It will also be available on BBC iPlayer and on BBC Sounds.

Presenter Mark Carruthers said: "It's going to be an awful lot easier for people to watch or listen to this programme, for example, on their phones or on their tablets."

Carruthers has presented BBC News NI's flagship political programmes Sunday Politics and The View since 2012.

"Moving to the new studio allows us to increase the reach of Sunday Politics," he said.

The programme will go out on four platforms at once and the presenter said the change was exciting but a challenge.

It is not the first time the programme has changed studios.

"If you go back to the beginning of it, we actually had soft seats, low seating with a coffee table, and then that changed when we moved into Studio B a number of years ago, and we went back to desk format," Carruthers said.

He thinks that the change is "going to look modern and very fresh".

He added that although there had been "different iterations in terms of its look" through the years, the programme's content had stayed the same.

The studio is changing but "it's still Sunday Politics", its presenter said.

Carruthers joined BBC Northern Ireland in 1989 and said one of the things he had learned from the past 37 years was that "nothing stays the same".

He also presents Red Lines, BBC News NI's politics podcast.

"The whole broadcast landscape is changing and changing so dramatically," he said.

"We have to think about our audience first and foremost, and the way people consume news, the way people consume current affairs is changing."

The programme will have discussions and in-depth interviews.

"We want to make sure that we're setting the agenda for the coming week on a Sunday morning," he said.

"If you're working in news and current affairs, you want that to have an impact.

"It's really important for us to be getting a live politics discussion programme out on the BBC Radio Ulster schedule again on a Sunday morning."

Senior news editor Gwyneth Jones said it was exciting to be switching to a multi-platform studio, adding that the media landscape is changing.

"I think there's a realisation, and there has been for some time, that we need to go where our audiences are, so that is no longer only on a linear broadcast telly format," she said.

"We are still delivering the same trusted live political journalism where public figures are held to account and where their decisions are scrutinised, as we've always done, but we are bringing that to a much wider audience.

Finance Minister John O'Dowd will be the first politician on the programme in its new studio.

Sunday Politics returns on Sunday 19 April at 10:00 BST and will be available to watch on BBC One Northern Ireland and BBC iPlayer and to listen simultaneously on BBC Radio Ulster/Foyle and BBC Sounds.