BBC News Show Taps Anchor

A new nightly newscast on digital cable channels BBC America and BBC World News America will be anchored by globetrotting BBC correspondent Matt Frei.

The show, BBC World News America, starts at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, Oct. 1, exclusively on the two channels. Katty Kay, a U.S.-based BBC journalist, will be its Washington correspondent, covering among other things the 2008 elections.

Frei will operate out of the BBC’s Washington, D.C., bureau. The program will feature in-depth reports on major international and U.S. news, with special packages from BBC correspondents. “A uniquely global perspective” on the news is what the show aims to provide U.S. viewers, executive producer Rome Hartman said in a release.

During his BBC career, Frei has reported from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War and conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo. He’s been the BBC’s Washington Correspondent since 2003, after serving as Asia Correspondent, based in Singapore and then Hong Kong, where he covered the tumultuous Asian economic collapse in the late ’90s and the fall of President Suharto in Indonesia.

Philippa Thomas, another U.S.-based BBC reporter, has been named the presenter of a new nightly newscast on the two channels, World News Today, airing at 10 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT.

BBCA said public television stations around the country will continue to air BBC World News newscasts at various times during the day, including a 6 p.m. ET half-hour bulletin anchored by Frei and a 10 p.m. half-hour program that Thomas anchors.