Why TV news needs charisma

It's one thing for television reporters to get the basics of the story across. But these days they also need personality and the ability to perform, the BBC's Huw Edwards tells Ian Burrell

When Huw Edwards was a lad in Llanelli he dreamed of becoming a virtuoso concert pianist and he still nurtures an ambition of presenting the Proms.

He appreciates the art of performance does Huw, and he believes there is room for improvement in the front-of-camera skills of some of the BBC's correspondents. "We get very able guys working here and somehow lots of them find it difficult to translate excitement into good viewing on screen," he says. "It's not that they're not able. It's not that they are not understanding the subject they are doing. But it takes a bit of charisma and personality to force that through."

According to Edwards, 42, a correspondent with a big personality and a distinctive style benefits both the newscaster and the viewer. "We are in the business of connecting with audiences and you need to make an effort. The stories are often very good and stand in their own right but it needs somebody to pitch them at an audience and it needs somebody to explain them. The ones that do it well have the big personalities and can perform. And I don't mind using the word 'perform'. You have to perform."

The presenter of the BBC News at Ten O'Clock does not directly criticise any of his colleagues, preferring to credit star BBC news performers such as political editor Andrew Marr and business editor Jeff Randall for setting a new gold standard in television reporting. "Randall and Marr have encouraged people to be a little more themselves rather than adopt a kind of on-screen persona which slightly suppresses characteristics that are good for broadcasting," he says.

Marr, says Edwards, has helped to change the culture of "insidery and Westminster villagey" BBC political reporting. "He was a bit of a shock to people when he first turned up. Speaking in clear English, telling people what's happened, and doing it with a colourful turn of phrase. It has transformed the coverage."

Mark Mardell, the BBC's chief political correspondent and a friend of Edwards, also benefits from being "slightly quirky, slightly eccentric". "That helps because it defines people. And he's always in search of a good turn of phrase that people will remember," says the newsreader.

Edwards, who has periodically worked as an instructor training BBC journalists, is a supporter of Ron Neil's suggestion of a journalism school for BBC current-affairs staff, saying it makes "total common sense". He argues that skills to perform as a broadcaster should be taught as part of such a course. He says that BBC news was "more staid" in the past but admits that he would be "rightly coshed over the head" if he didn't acknowledge that it has always had "strong performers and characters", from Charles Wheeler to John Simpson.

Edwards defends BBC News against criticisms in the Governors' recent annual report of coverage of the Gulf War, although he acknowledges there were some technological difficulties. "If there were access problems, it's pretty obvious they need to be dealt with," he says. "[But] day after day the Ten was the most watched."

He concedes that business reporting on the BBC was "not great" in the past. "Ten years ago our coverage of business was pretty bad. I would even go so far as to say people in the newsroom were quite sniffy about business reporting. 'Dodgy people in the City' was the philosophy. Thank God that has changed," he says.

Since he moved from the News at six o'clock to the Ten in January last year, Edwards's own profile in the business world has increased considerably, reminding him of the very different audiences of the two bulletins. "Huw presenting the 'Six' is very different from Huw presenting the Ten," he says.

As a newscaster on the "Six" (Style: "respectful informality"), he was regularly treated as a celebrity when he visited his local supermarket. Moving to the Ten (Style: "relaxed formality") last year was a "bloody steep learning curve". Not just because he was replacing Peter Sissons and Michael Buerk, but because he had to win over a whole new set of viewers. "When I was at the "Six" I would go to a conference in the City and nobody knew who I was," he recalls. "I was thinking 'I present Britain's most watched television-news programme and all these high-powered guys never see it because they are not at home'. But they all watch the News at Ten O'Clock."

Edwards argues that the Ten is in good shape and - although he is reluctant to put the boot into his old pal Trevor McDonald - he claims that the ITV 10.30pm bulletin has been allowed to deteriorate into "a pretty diluted kind of product". Gray's Inn Road, he says, has concentrated its efforts on building up its 6.30pm news programme with its "big bazooka of a studio".

The mix on the Ten has improved, he says, and regulation political packages that would have "automatically been included" on the old Nine O'Clock News do not now pass muster.

Edwards makes this comment as a former BBC Chief Political Correspondent and a former presenter of such heavyweight programmes as Newsnight and Panorama.

But he has also hosted events as diverse as Songs of Praise, the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

Asked if he aspires to become the "next David Dimbleby", Edwards responds in the style of a Match of the Day interviewee, saying he is taking each job as it comes. He was "very, very flattered" to present the D-Day coverage this summer and the size of the mailbag he received left him in no doubt that it was "the kind of programming people expect the BBC to be doing". As to the future; as well as hosting a Proms, he would like - before his career is over - to be able to oversee coverage on the night of a General Election.

He is especially pleased with a live discussion show he does for BBC Wales from an "in-the-round" studio at the Cardiff Coal Exchange. "It's a kind of ringmaster role," explains Edwards. "That's a format that works really well. It allows me to show some of the sides to my personality because, as you know, news is a bit of a straitjacket. I turn up to some events and people say 'God, he's got a sense of humour, can you believe that?' "

Edwards is anxious to show that he, too, can perform. "I'm not just some miserable git who reads the news," he says.