Sky News: Presenters & Rotas

So I've had time to watch more of it and maybe some of the criticism was over the top, but I still don't like it.

Firstly the sound is terrible, how that was not caught in tests I will never know. It sounds horrible and I hope they can do something to fix it by changing the studio. If it cannot be fixed because of the fact it is an open space that is enclosed with lots of hard surfaces, then whoever designed the set should be asking themselves serious questions if they spent so much money to build a set and it only occured to them on launch day that they might have this problem.

Secondly there is FAR TOO MUCH GOING ON behind the presenter. People moan about swishes and over the top graphics, and Sky of course have been guilty of that, but the distractions behind the presenter with people walking are the single most annoying thing I have seen in the last while on Sky News. This just wasn't possible in every other studio they had The argument was previously that nothing should distract from th news, well this is and far worse than any voice over that lasts a few seconds or TOTH, it's constant.

Thirdly it is too empty there and nothing will change my mind about Sky having lost it's identity. There are two coloiurs that Sky News are associated with. Blue dating back 25 years and red for most of that time period too. In this new set they have effectively totally abandoned blue and Red is basically gone if you ignore the straps and the logo. As someone who has done courses in marketing and brand management this is one of the golden rules for successful brands. When you are refreshing things you keep your identity.

Do you see Easyjet saying that orange and white are bad so we'll change to green and yellow? Do you see Samsung saying that they are going to change to red and black? Do you see BBC deciding they will change their colours to blue and white? Do you see CNN deciding Orange is not good anymore so we will go for gold and white? Do you see NBC deciding that the colours of their logo are stupid and changing all of them?

As for coverage of breaking news. Sophy Ridge, a person who is at best a poor standard presenter has her own prime time programme on a Friday, and also a slot on Saturday and Sunday, because 11 people have left or been let go. Her delivery as a presenter is very robotic and cold, she comes across as completely uncaring and forced delivery in last weeks breaking news. Before her we had two of the cover presengers, one of which could barely string a line together without hesitating. This was at 5pm, a time where JT and Andrew Wilson used tocover.

And before anyone says that it wasn't helped by studio testing, of course it wasn't. but the simple fact is that the relief presenters they have are generally not up to the job as was proven last Friday and over the course of the year they are going to have to use them a lot because there are going to be times when they are four or five presenters down, whether that is through illness, being posted abroad, maternity leave, holiday etc, so these people will have to be used.

So far we've seen the following leave
Andrew Wilson
Lorna Dunkley
Samantha Simmonds
Paula Middlehurst
Martin Stanford
Jannat Jalil
Mark Longhurst
Dharshini David
Jeremy Thompson
Eammonn Holmes
Sam Washington
Hannah Tallett

Now I've said it before, that they were top heavy in the presenter area and they were. But now we have gone to having the likes of Sophy Ridge, who is an excellent political hack, getting her own hours, and apart from Gamal, the relief presenters of Sam, Tom and Claudia who for me simply don't cut it. For me they are a couple of presenters short. Any two of the above still being at the channel would make it a lot better and the fact is they are going to have to work a few shifts most weeks unless Sky simply bans holidays for it's staff or makes people work double shifts on a regular basis.

As for the comments that the journalism is good still, well I agree it is still good, but even that has took a hit with the number of bureaus being cut and the number of reporters that have also been let go. I've noticed that reporters have been much slower to get to stories in the last couple of months, compared to previously, but again hardly surprising when a number have left their roles and the remaining ones have to cover much greater territory. But at least the foreign corrospondents haven't been cut, a big exit there, really would be serious

As for the comment about Sky coverage in businesses, this is from my own experience in Ireland, it might not be the same in the UK but here Sky News is shown a lot in receptions, offices, on screens etc, because Sky News covers Irish stories as well as British when the BBC don't. However with the drop in business content lately and the general lack of an Irish feed for those who stream or get the channel digitally rather than through TV, they just switch to BBC since they only have the choice of Sky News International now compared to the Sky News Ireland feed in the past. like the TV. I don't have any staistics, it's just an observation.