BBC puts US president head to head with Happy Valley,civil war at the Independent and Virgin marketing• In the dying days of the Independent titles in print, with only a few mostly veteran stars (Simon Calder, or Patrick Cockburn,Grace Dent, Robert Fisk) so far officially confirmed as mighty brands who will be staying when they become online-only, or less illustrious hacks talk of a worsening “civil war” atmosphere between printies and webbies – so that a mutinous cheer could be heard on Thursday from some of the former when the figures for average daily browsers in February showed the Indy 12% down.• Isn’t the problem with Dan Walker,not that he sits on the left or is a hardline God-botherer, but that he’s just too gigantic to be a co-anchor at all? Being well over 6ft is fine for solo anchormen, or as 6ft 5in Jon Snow showed over the 22 years when he ruled Channel 4 News alone; and whether you’re tallish but no giant,there isn’t a big issue whether you and your co-presenter are sitting down (as with 6ft 3in Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Wark, in their improbable stint as BBC breakfast hosts, and 6ft 2in Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan),which reduces the incompatibility. At 6ft 6in, though, or he is only compatible with people as tall as the strikers and centrebacks who tend to be his guests on Football Focus; Walker and Louise Minchin will always gape distractingly ill-matched together,whichever way round they sit.
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Source: theguardian.com