but now where next for breakfast as it enters its fifth decade? we'll be exploring those questions in a moment but first, a selection of your views about the show, starting with this compliment from jason pollitt. in recent years, breakfast has become known for a focus on campaigns around health issues, such as a series of items on former rugby league player rob burrow, who has motor neurone disease. here's a couple of examples from the past few days. tim, andy and mike, the three dads walking. each lost a daughter

to suicide in september. they walked between all four uk parliaments calling for suicide prevention to become a compulsory part of the school curriculum. the idea is to do any exercise you want swimming, running, cycling, anything and record it on the doddie aid app. every individual bit of exercise done is counted on the app and then added to a leaderboard. now, in its third year, doddie aid has already raised a remarkable £2 million for research. features like those don't go down well with all the audience. here's one viewer who got in touch with us. hello. i'm a big fan of bbc breakfast and have been watching for many, many years, but lately it seems that it's become very one note in terms of reports on campaigning. many years, but lately it seems that it's become very one note in terms of reports on campaigning. i'm in awe of the work that mnd campaigners do, for example, and the ladies who brought across, i think, the north sea or the atlantic and the dads who've been highlighting the suicide problems among young men. it's wonderful, but it seems that

bbc breakfast will pick up the story and just follow it maybe once or twice a week for absolutely ages, and you'll have a package with the film and then you'll have a studio interview and the reports seem to be getting longer and longer. peter pollock echoed that begging... others object to the amount of airtime given to guests publicising a new book, film or television series. here's some more clips from the past week. i'm going to ask you lots of very

in—depth questions about the whole show and everything. but the first one has to be about the hair. wow. i mean, that's like a whole character in itself. it is, yeah. tell us about the show. how does it work? how do you put these celebrity couples through the tasks? your play is all about manners. do you want to just explain this? you do it better. the play's written by steven moffat of sherlock fame, of course. keith grant was one of a number of viewers objecting to interviews such as those. and joe chandler expressed concern about the recent focus on one particular book.

plenty there to discuss with the editor of bbc breakfast, richard fredianelli. thank you so much for coming on newswatch. it's lovely to have you here along with the rest of bbc news. i think it's fair to say you've done a lot about prince harry in the past couple of weeks. too much. we have done a lot, but we've done far more on the cost of living or the health crisis facing the national health service across the uk. prince harry's story is a story of genuine interest. look at how many books he sold in the last few days. it's a story that the viewers will react to. and i would argue, is it about we've done too much or is there just a subjective appeal about whether we should be doing it at all? ultimately, we live in a constitutional monarchy. prince harry is part of that. and therefore, what he has to say about his own life, the life of his relationship with prince william, the king and others, is going to be of interest and in some case, in some parts of it may be of significant news value. people see all those interviews, which we gave examples of with celebrities plugging their new book or their new play

or their new film or their tv show, and they think it's just free advertising and it's all coming at the expense of real news. what do you say? well, look, we're a topical news programme, so we do a mix of news. but other issues and issues that matter to the audience and an audience's life is filled with many different events and shades of what they do. so, for instance, as well as the issues that matter to them on a day to day basis, such as health and cost of living, they're watching television at home. so whether it's happy valley that rates at five or six million and they're interested in the story of the character that the lead role in happy valley is based on. or, for instance, johnny vegas came on earlier this week, ostensibly to to talk about a new programme which is in. but actually the interview ended up talking about his recent diagnosis of adhd, of which we've got a huge amount of viewer feedback praising us for discussing that issue so openly. which leads onto my next question,

which is the health related charity campaigns, which are slightly different to the news story that you just gave an example of. those campaigns have become regular part of breakfast. regular part of breakfast. and as you know, there are viewers who feel that there's ample space for this sort of thing after 9:15am and again, it's just too much of it on breakfast, which is, they think, a news programme. look, i'm grateful to the millions of viewers who tune in to bbc breakfast every single morning and make us the number one choice. and they're always, always going to be a divide about stories that. you believe we should and shouldn't cover in terms of those issues, such as what i would say is about raising awareness. i mean, look at kevin sinfield. it began two years ago as going out for a run with six people and ended up with 67,000 people and several million on television cheering him into the final, the rugby league world cup final, after he'd run seven ultramarathons in seven days. but what it did was focus and attention on that issue. we've done the same with prostate cancer. we had viewers contacting us about a guy called garry mccarthy who had run 365 marathons in 365

days because he wanted to raise awareness about macmillan cancer. and they were saying to us, why aren't you giving him more attention? we think he should be celebrated because you know what? these are people doing extraordinary things to raise awareness and help millions, literally, of other people. do you see breakfast as a news or as an entertainment show? it's a topical news programme that has a mix of everything for viewers in different ways. it's not like the 6:00 news. it's not the 10:00 news. and that's notjust true of us. but i look across the media landscape at breakfast time, and whether you're talking about us or any of our rivals, you see that same sort of mix at breakfast. i can onlyjudge it based on the reaction we get from our audience, and that's why programmes like newswatch are of value. the emails we get in the tweets that i see, the audience is contacting viewer complaints. we take all those things on board. i think, look, news is often subjective to many people. everybody has a view about what you should and shouldn't cover. people have a view about what issues you should and shouldn't cover.

0n newswatch. it's a subjective industry and we take a view about the issues we think we should cover, the stories we should cover, often based on audience interaction. and when we do that, i think it gives the audience a range of stories that they enjoy on a daily basis. do you think that one of the reasons there are more complaints we were wondering is because so much of breakfast is now simulcast on the news channel, and people watching the news channel, you know, they used to know if i turn on the news. i'll get a news bulletin, essentially with news interviews. and they don't get that anymore. well, look, breakfast has been on the news channel since, what, 2000, right? 95% of our audience is on is on bbc one. just a very small section of it is on the news channel. and the only comparison i can give you is there's only one time of the week when we're exclusively on the news channel and not on bbc one.

and that's on a sunday morning when bbc one plays much of the day. highlights at around 730. and you know what? the number one choice from 730 till 9:00 on a sunday morning ahead of any other news channel by significant level is bbc breakfast on the bbc news channel. so we clearly are doing something that the audience appreciate. newswatch, of course, as you said yourself, goes out during breakfast on saturdays, which we love. we get a big audience sometimes covering complaints about breakfast. is it weird for you? i don't think it's weird. i think there's a challenge for newswatch, which isjust because you're on breakfast, does that mean that the audience always feel like you're the regulator and monitor of breakfast? and i think the challenge is to make sure that you cover complaints about all range of bbc programmes. look, i don't think it is. i think it's right that you exist. i think it's right that the audience is views are reflected and i think it's right that people like me are held to account. richard, thank you so much for coming on newswatch. thank you for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, on tv, radio, online and social media email newswatch at bbc.co.uk or you can find us on twitter at newswatch bbc.

you can call us on 0370106676. and do you have a look at previous interviews on our website, bbc.co.uk newswatch. that's all from us. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again next week. goodbye. hello there. flooding remains a concern heading into the first part of the weekend. this is picture of the river severn overflowing and flooding, low lying ground round worcestershire. problem is, we've got more heavy rain on the way and with lots of flood warnings currently in force, most of those are actually for stretches of the river severn where we could see further problems heading into the first part of the weekend. the next area of heavy rain is going to come from this area of low pressure, this cloud that's very quickly moving into our shores at the moment.

and through friday night and into saturday morning, some of the hillier areas of wales, maybe south west england could see as much as 70 millimetres of rain, that rain falling on those areas that are already experiencing flooding. now, the weather does brighten up later in the day, but we'll see some rain moving back into scotland, northern ireland, northwest england, where it turns windy with gales and through the day it will start to turn a little bit cooler across northern areas, although in the south will still see highs up to about 12 now through saturday. night—time still very windy for scotland, northern ireland, northern england too, with rain at times colder air working in. so we're going to start to see those temperatures drop. may well see some patches of frost developing in sheltered parts of scotland as we head into sunday morning. and certainly sunday is going to feel really quite chilly because we're going to lose those south westerly winds we've had over recent days, replace it with colder north westerly winds with the air coming down from polar regions. now with that, there is the risk of seeing some wintry showers across northern scotland on sunday. got this little band of rain

left over stretching across northern ireland, probably running into parts of northern england, wales and the midlands. but otherwise, most parts of the country are having a bright day with some sunshine. it will, though, feel quite cold, particularly for scotland, where temperatures across northern areas willjust be around three orfour degrees. but even further south, eight it's coldest the weather's been so far this year, really into next week. things that we do know about the forecast, well, it's going to be a lot colder. there'll be widespread frost, some ice patches to come and some snow showers coming right the way down to low levels. but there's some uncertainty about details about something potentially a bit more disruptive. take sunday night, for example. some models have snow in northern scotland and a few wintry showers inland across england and wales. but there are some other models that develop an area of low pressure. and in this scenario, we could be looking at a spell of disruptive snow sunday night and into monday mornings rush hour across parts of england and wales. i must stress, though, those details are really quite uncertain at the moment. are the differences between those two models are down to the jet stream?

now, within jet streams we've got 220 miles an hour. that's a strong atlantic jet within jets. we get development regions just here, sat across england and wales. if you can get a low pressure to move exactly into that region, it develops. if it misses that region, it doesn't develop. and that's why we're seeing a difference in the models at the moment. eitherway, really, as we head into monday, we'll be looking at cold weather, northerly winds bringing snow certainly to northern scotland, maybe to eastern scotland. and eastern england just depends on the details of a low pressure that by this stage will be out in the north sea. very cold temperatures struggling to get much above freezing across northern areas, maybe about four in london. now, choose the onwards. i have to say there's not a great deal of certainty in the forecast. it will be cold still. there could be some areas of disruptive snow around, but we're just not sure about the details. the trend really is for the weather gradually to turn a bit milder into next weekend. quite a lot going on then. bye for now.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. russia claims its forces have captured the ukrainian town of soledar , but kyiv insists �*severe�* fighting is still ongoing. a gas pipeline connecting lithuania and latvia has been hit by an explosion. the country's gas operator says it's launched an investigation. footballer benjamin mendy is found not guilty of six counts of rape and one of sexual assault. but he faces a retrial on two other counts on which the jury failed to reach a verdict also in the programme. how the world cup may have given a much—needed boost to the uk's economy.