THE ONE Show returned last night with hosts Alex Jones and Jermaine Jenas on the green sofa and they were joined by Watchdog presenter Matt Albright, but viewers were left fuming that his appearance was so brief.
Following its cancellation in 2019, the popular investigative programme Watchdog has become a weekly segment on The One Show, a move that fans say “fails viewers.”
At the beginning of last night’s episode, Alex, 46, and Jermaine, 41, introduced Matt’s Watchdog segment, which is a much condensed version of the former BBC show which began airing in 1985.
The segment recurs weekly in Wednesday evening’s episode of The One Show and is presented by Matt, alongside Nikki Fox.
It investigates problems facing consumers and exposes the companies, institutions and fraudsters who are ripping them off.
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But the Watchdog segment is only a small part of The One Show’s 30-minute long episode, and BBC fans are fuming as they think it deserves much more screen time as it covers such important topics.
Ahead of last night’s show, one viewer took to X, formerly Twitter, to call out the BBC for pulling Watchdog off the air and turning into a short segment on another show.
“Time for the weekly 5 minute 20 second segment of Watchdog... it deserves so much more," they said.
“BBC failed its viewers by relegating Watchdog to a side bit slot on The One Show,” agreed another viewer.
While a third noted the five-minute segment, saying: “Interesting to note the relegation of Watchdog programme by the BBC.”
In last night’s Watchdog segment, Matt looked into the cost of living, and talked about important issues affecting consumers.
He was particularly focused on how water metres are causing big bills and the cost of car insurance for young drivers.
Matt took company Thames Water to task as interviewed one of their customers who was receiving huge monthly bills, but his segment only lasted a few minutes.
The programme quickly moved on to other topics, and later in the episode, Alex and Jermaine sat down with Theo James and Kaya Scodelario to chat about their new Netflix show The Gentlemen, which premieres on the streamer today.
The One Show airs weekdays on BBC One at 7pm.
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