Analysis: A question for the BBC: what is the point of 24-hour news?

Government inquiry says News 24 must cut entertainment and concentrate on foreign affairs, regional reports, politics and business

News 24 is too similar to its commercial rivals, says the Government. It must improve, or the BBC's 24-hour rolling news station might not be allowed to continue.

In practice there is little chance of that happening because the BBC has already indicated it will comply with the Government's wishes. Precisely what those wishes are is harder to understand. Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, says the digital channel must have "a clear remit and distinct identity".

But if News 24 is too similar to Sky News – and it is Sky rather than the ITN News channel which really counts – the Government's warning begs a crucial question. How do you give a news channel a "distinct identity" without diluting its commitment to reporting the news?

The directive follows a review of News 24 by Richard Lambert, the former editor of the Financial Times. Mr Lambert advised the Government to draw up new performance and scrutiny measures, saying the channel does not give value for money. News 24 costs £50m a year to run and last year had a 0.1 per cent audience share. The Lambert report, released yesterday, suggests that News 24 should make more use of the BBC's newsgathering operations to make international news its specialist niche.

Mr Lambert makes use of his newspaper experience to compare News 24 and Sky News with the newspaper market. In perhaps the report's most telling phrase he says that Sky is the Daily Mail of rolling television news and News 24 should be the broadsheet.

He does not, to the viewers' relief, go so far as to say that it should be a 24-hour Financial Times. But the implication is clear. News 24 should eschew showbiz and concentrate on politics, business news and most particularly international affairs and regional news.

He also has a bit of fun at the expense of News 24's admittedly eccentric visual identity. Its sets, Mr Lambert says, can look like "a car crash in a shower room".

There are those, not least in the BBC, who believe there is an element of Rupert Murdoch appeasement in the whole exercise. His BskyB does not believe there should be a rolling news service funded by the licence-fee payer and has lobbied the Government extensively to make its case.

The public appetite for rolling news was created by CNN, which came into its own during the Gulf War of 1990-91. The CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour became a household name for her coverage of the war in Iraq.

Today both Sky News and News 24 are doing better than they have in the past. Both figure in the top 20 most watched digital channels. Both are part of the Freeview package for digital viewers with the new £99 set-top boxes. Both are respected, as is the ITV news channel with its lower public profile. None of the British channels, it should be noted, apes Fox News in America where the news is slanted in polemical bulletins to suit the presenters, several of whom are very right wing.

Here, Sky is better than News 24 on breaking news and entertainment news. But breaking news can be too much of a good thing. Yesterday it went live to Washington to show that it was snowing. More seriously, during the conflict in Afghanistan, it reported the fall of a number of cities before they had actually fallen. It also reported the arrest of Radavan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who has been indicted as a war criminal, when he had not actually been arrested. The BBC breaks fewer stories but is more careful in its checks.

Mr Lambert is not always clear in his advice. He says that News 24 should be distinctive, but at the same time that it should copy Sky by breaking more stories.

Mr Lambert poses a question which goes to the heart of 24-hour news, a question to which there is no easy answer and which he himself doesn't answer. "Is it best to show the same small set of news stories repeatedly, allowing viewers to switch on and pick up a surface-level knowledge of the news straight away? Or should they be giving more depth and variety to their stories, at the expense of the viewer who needs the headlines fast?"

In its recommendations the Lambert report is implicitly critical of the BBC governors, saying they need to give the station "a much clearer sense of direction".

The review also calls on governors to report more fully on how the service delivers its objectives each year. And it says the BBC should disclose more financial details about the service.

The BBC has been told to respond to the report by the end of February, and revise the channel by the end of April, taking on board the recommendations.

Ms Jowell said: "I've said before that the BBC should provide us with public service channels that are distinctive from commercial channels.

"I see no reason why News 24 should be any different.

"Richard Lambert's report has persuaded me that the BBC governors need to deliver a clearer remit for News 24: one that will produce a high quality public service, rolling news service whilst at the same time develop a distinct identity for the channel, setting it apart from other 24-hour news services.

"I think that the new conditions will help the BBC to focus on achieving this goal."

The shadow Culture Secretary John Whittingdale said: "Richard Lambert's review confirms that BBC News 24 has departed from the BBC's public service remit and represents unfair competition, funded by the licence fee, with existing commercial channels. I welcome measures to ensure that BBC News 24 becomes a distinct service which does not seek to replicate existing channels."

BSkyB welcomed the report, saying it was "long overdue". The company claimed the report "accepts Sky News's criticism that News 24 has been too imitative in copying many of our innovations rather than developing a distinctive service of its own".

Responding to the criticisms, the BBC said that having built up its audience, its challenge was "to create a more distinctive and even better quality service than its competitors".

Insiders add that there will be no conflict with the Government. Mr Lambert's recommendations will be followed. But they also add that those recommendations to concentrate more on international affairs, business and politics and give more time to regional reporting, were already becoming noticeable, so viewers may not see much difference.

BBC NEWS 24

With a £50m budget and a reach of 3.6 million viewers a week it can boast added value with Tim Sebastian's Hard Talk interviews, John Simpson's personal explorations of different countries, a film review programme and Liquid News, the entertainment news show. Its reporters and presenters came into their own after the 11 September terrorist attacks; and it has the worldwide resource of BBC foreign correspondents. But it can occasionally look a little unprofessional with missed links and wrong captions.

SKY NEWS

Probably the most professional-looking of the three channels. It has a £30m budget and reaches 4.3 million viewers a week in the UK, claiming 80 million viewers in 40 countries. Its recent habit of having newscasters standing in front of video walls is irritating. An emphasis on interactive gimmicks can get in the way too. The Lambert report implies it has more of a downmarket thrust than News 24, but it is more than efficient on international coverage and politics, and breaks stories in both areas.

ITV NEWS CHANNEL

It started as the ITN news channel with newscasters from days gone by. But it has now relaunched with contemporary ITV newscasters such as David Suchet and Nick Owen. It costs £9m a year and has a weekly reach of 1.8 million. Emphasises regional coverage. But not enough people are watching; so the channel stages Champions League football games live every Wednesday to get a wider profile, annoying football fans who don't receive the channel and confusing those who tune in expecting news.