This month the growing 24-hour TV news business will be joined by a new player, BBC News 24. And tomorrow morning the BBC will launch its latest online service, also offering 24hour rolling news, BBC News Online (at www.news.bbc.co.uk).
The BBC already has a 24hour news channel, the commercial venture BBC World, which isavailable outside Britain and Ireland. BBC News 24 was to be digital but after delays in setting up digital services in Britain the BBC decided to go the cable and analog route first, with the channel becoming digital later. Besides new faces BBC News 24 will use well-known journalists including John Simpson, Charles Wheeler and Robin Day. It will show some programmes made for BBC World, and on its launch it will be available in over 1.5 million cabled homes in Britain. BBC News 24 will also be available in Ireland in homes already receiving BBC channels - it will be broadcast on them during the night between closedown and the start of breakfast programmes. It has also been offered free to cable operators in Britain, and some have taken Sky News off their services. Cable services in Ireland have not yet decided whether to offer it.
But it is not only on the airwaves that the rolling news battle is taking place. Most 24-hour news channels now offer impressive Web sites, especially MSNBC (www.mscnbc.com), ABC (www.abcnews.com), CNBC (www.cnbc.com) and CNN Interactive (www.cnn.com). Next January CBS will be launching its 24-hour online news service, CBSnow. And online services such as Yahoo!, America Online and the Microsoft Network are expanding their news offerings on "channels". Up to now the BBC only had one-off Web sites for events such as the death of Princess Diana, the handover of Hong Kong, elections and budgets. Its new online news service will draw on both the BBC's domestic news output and the World Service.
The launch of BBC News Online completes its three-part Web strategy - this summer it unveiled the entertainment and information service Beeb.com, and its original home page (at www.bbc.co.uk) will be revamped and relaunched next month.
A BBC spokeswoman said the new cable and online news services were part of the organisation's agenda of offering news at all times. "Why should you wait for news? You should get it when you want it," she said.
BBC World and BBC News 24 join a growing number of allnews channels, including Sky News, EuroNews and CNN, with at least eight major stations battling it out in Europe. But 24hour news channels, including the growing number of business news channels, aren't just designed for hotel rooms in foreign countries where you don't understand the local channels. They hope to survive into the next century, as digital systems within pay-per-view markets.
Among those lining up in the battle for 24-hour news, or "news on demand", are CNN, CNBC (operating in Europe within MSNBC, NBC and Microsoft's joint venture), and Rupert Murdoch's Sky News, which has just returned its first profit.
Smaller players include Bloombergs Business News and European Business News (EBN). EuroNews, subsidised by the French Government and the EU, was launched as an antidote to what was seen as CNN's Americanisation of the news. Britain's ITN is expected to buy EuroNews, giving its news operation access to Europe's 24-hour news battlefield.
All over Europe more and more 24-hour news channels are springing up. Italian public broadcaster RAI is planning one, Germany has a news and parliamentary channels, and Spain has four digital news channels.
BBC News 24 will be a national 24-hour channel, and is part of a growing trend away from a global view - or at least a US one - towards local news television.
Chris Cramer, head of CNN International, which formats CNN's news for audiences outside the US told the European recently that, paradoxically, the way ahead for services such as CNN is regionalisation. CNN has launched regional channels for Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.
Michael Foley is at: mfoley@irish-times.ie
Test pages (showing the Irish presidential election) of the BBC News Online site which will be officially launched tomorrow.