Sixty Minutes (UK TV programme) 3 September 1984 with the "Six O'clock News". Arguably, another legacy was the eventual integration of the BBC News and Current Affairs departments. Sixty Minutes (UK TV programme) Sixty Minutes is a news and current affairs programme which ran each weekday at 5:40pm between 24 October 1983 to 27 July 1984 on BBC1. It replaced the "Nationwide" programme, and like "Nationwide", it also integrated the BBC regional news programmes into a single magazine programme. However, the BBC's News department stoutly maintained its independence from colleagues in Current Affairs, and the first 15 minutes of news was almost a separate programme,
Criticism of the BBC the BBC and don't want to fight another against it." In 2006 Tebbit said: "The BBC was always against Lady Thatcher." Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC said in 2010 "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979], there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality." BBC News forms a major department of the Corporation, and receives many complaints of bias. The Centre for Policy Studies has stated that, "Since at