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Talk me through the upcoming changes on Sky News and why they've been made?
What we wanted was to put our best and main presenters at the heart of what we do and for a longer period of time. The familiar names on Sky News that bring you the news with authority and panache - like Jeremy Thompson, Kay Burley, Julie Etchingham, Eamonn Holmes and Anna Botting - are being stripped right across the day for longer time slots, so when you tune into Sky News you get one of the familiar faces bringing you the news.
Was that the thinking behind business journalist Jeff Randall's new show?
Exactly - and that fits into it - it's the authority of the journalism that we want to emphasise.
Journalists at other news operations have previously been accused of not having business savvy - is Jeff Randall's show Sky News' way of having more of a business focus on the channel?
We want the best journalism there is on Sky News and I don't think anyone would argue that Jeff is one of Britain's prominent, foremost business commentators. We want it to combine with what we've called "business views on breaking news". We stay very much with the mainstream news agenda but we get a business angle on it. If you were talking about say, this week, we'd expect Jeff's show to cover Jose Mourinho going, because that's a business story. In fact, Jeff was the person who broke the news that Abramovic [Chelsea's Russian owner] was coming to the UK. And obviously we'd be doing things like Mervyn King appearing in front of the Treasury Committee. So it's taking our mainstream news agenda and giving a business view to it.
It couldn't be better timing with the Northern Rock fallout, a business story that's front page news.
If you just pick off the business stories that have been around this week, virtually every story that we do has a business angle. There's football, the business of football. There's Northern Rock, the role of the governor of the Bank of England. There's British Aerospace and America and allegations of corruption. All of these are mainstream stories, which Jeff and our general coverage can bring a specific angle to.
You've got a new show - Sky.com News - focusing on the online side of news. The internet and other digital platforms are really changing the way we view news; do you think that's a good thing?
Well I think it is. We've all got to be - and we are - in the business of putting our product out on as many platforms as we can. It's very important to us as a business that the Sky News brand is out on as many platforms as possible. There's been fantastic growth of our website over the last 12 months. In fact I was just reading some Comscore figures which put us ahead of the BBC in 'dwell time' - the amount of time each visitor spends on the website - for the first time. When you think where we came from 12 years ago, before we started investing heavily in the Sky News website, it just shows how far we've come. We were first in [August] Comscore ratings by dwell time, second in visits and third in page views, beaten only by the BBC website and The Sun. We've come from being an 'also-ran' in terms of news provision on the net to being in the premier league.
Does that mean your reporters have to be 'masters of all trades' for all the different platforms now?
They have to be flexible. Our reporters, as a matter of course, also file for the web. They've got 3G phones, so they file video when they can. So in that sense they've got to do more. We do have a reasonable amount of web-dedicated effort as well, as we realise the danger of spreading resource too thinly across your output. That's something we're very aware of. You have to be very careful about what you ask your reporters to do and make sure it doesn't interfere with their newsgathering and journalism. But we've all now got to be adaptable enough to contribute to all media and all the platforms.
What do you think about recent controversies over using techniques like "noddys" and walking shots in news programmes? Five News - which Sky News produces - has got rid of them.
The initiative that Five took under its new editor David Kermode is something that we share. So you will see on Sky News that the classic 'noddy' and the post set-up stuff is no longer done - at least as far as possible. The policy is the same as Five News.
On Friday, you showcased live coverage of Prince's concert at London's O2. How did that come about?
A lot of people in the newsroom seemed to have contact with the people organising this event. I'm not quite sure about Prince's agenda, but obviously he was trying to make a point about the availability of music and how the public can get it. And he saw the advantage of a link of with us. He did the link up with The Mail on Sunday (where he gave away his album for free) which caused a lot of discussion and a mini storm in the music industry. I guess from his point of view this is something that's 'let's test the water here with TV and see what happens'. Around it, we built a discussion about what the implications of him doing this are for the music industry and for the distribution of music.
Can you see Sky News doing more of this sort of thing?
I think the point about Sky, and I've worked here for 15 years, is that innovation is what we eat for breakfast. If we see an opportunity, we'll give it a go. If you don't roll the dice, you don't win. So who knows? People are always coming to us with ideas for things to do - some of which we'll take on and some of which we won't. Until they come and make the offer, I can't say whether we will be doing more of it or not.
Thanks Chris!
Jeff Randall Live begins on Monday September 24 at 7.30pm. The new Sky News schedule begins on October 1.
