The new NEW Central West and BBC Midlands thread

Subtitles will probably have been created off script - not necessarily the autocue as networking between systems back then wasn't as integrated as it is now.

Also I think most subtitles on live unscripted elements were created by stenographers in this era. They're the people you see typing in courts - I believe they use a phonetic system a little like Pittman Shorthand to very quickly type everything as it's said 'for the record'. Stenographers for subtitling have now been largely replaced by 'respeakers' - people who listen to the output and respeak it into a voice recognition software which then types up the subtitles. AIUI, respeaking was found to be more reliable than voice recognition software listening to the actual soundtrack, which often has dubbed on FX and music, different voices, accents etc.

http://career.iresearchnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Stenographer.jpg

Voice recognition software needs to be trained to recognise each voice accurately, so it's unlikely to be successful on a news programme output directly.

Channel TV's Mark McQuillan making his first appearance on tonight's ITV News Central filing a report from Hereford. I believe he may have also reported on Sport on yesterday's show.

I understand he's left Channel as of last week?

Correct. I like Mark, a good reporter and presenter. After leaving as host of a nightly news magazine to returning to reporting seems odd unless he wanted to go back to his roots or needed to move back to the region for personal reasons. Of course he could also be lined up to replace a retiring Bob Warman 😜😜

Looking at some old clips I see that Central Weather used to be provided by The Weather Department, and then by Weather Services International, and then by The Weather Channel.

Were all these the same company rebranding or did they keep moving provider? It seems quite an unusual set up considering everyone else seemed to use The Met Office.

Midlands Today with the most pointless of pointless lives from the balcony outside their studio.

Ross Hutchinson was doing the ITV Central weather at lunchtime.

This evening Matt Teale presented the first ten minutes from Birmingham to talk about the bin strikes. Stacey Foster presented the rest of the show from the studio.

That was common on Look Hull on a near daily basis a couple of years ago.

WSI, now called The Weather Company, owned The Weather Channel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Company

Who also held a contract for GMTV for the first year or so, which is why they used to have their weather from 'our weather department in Birmingham'

Bob Warman filing his own report on Birmingham Heritage Week on tonight's ITV News Central.

The only slight mistake is that he signed off his report for ITV News Central rather than ITV News.