The Newsroom

20 years of the BBC News Channel (BBC News 24)

Thursday 9th November 2017 marks 20 years since it's launch (November 2017)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
IT
itsrobert Founding member
JAS84 posted:
Oh, so that suggests it was nothing to do with technology, and was as I expected a forerunner to UK Today. Although that schedule seems to suggest it co-existed at the same time as both UK Today and UK Tonight.

Perhaps it was BBC World's counterpart? It sounds like the modern version is Reporters.

I don't think so. I could be misremembering but I think Reporters itself existed by about 1998. There was also a BBC World programme in about 1997 called 24 Hours - can't remember now whether this became Reporters? Other World programmes around this time were This Week (does this still exist in 2017? Haven't seen it for a very long time), Window on Europe, Euro Briefing (not Euro Brief which was hosted by David Jessel and IIRC aired on News 24 on Sunday afternoons), Science Week and, of course, Hard Talk.

News 24 had lots of strands, including the ones seen briefly on the anniversary as well as things like Europe Direct, USA Direct etc. There were so many of them it's hard to remember them all now! Hopefully someone with a better memory of this time will be able to wade in and clear things up!
JA
james-2001
Reporters was around when BBC News 24 first launched, I've got a video from the first month and they run a trailer for it
JA
james-2001
Here you go, included the previous weather forecast and all of the junction for good measure too

FL
flaziola
I presume those programmes being trailed for an ungodly hour are because they were BBC World simulcasts?
SN
The SNT Three
Seven days is seen in the below clip (ft. Bill Turnbull and Maxine Mawhinney):



And I didn't realise that Louise Minchin had appeared on News 24 so early on:

RN
Rolling News
Yes, Louise Minchin was working on News 24 not long after launch whilst also doing Radio 5 Live. I too was shocked as I didn't think she first appeared until 2003 when she was given her regular slot with Jon Sopel.
RK
Rkolsen
I cannot find the post but is there any reason why a clip from BBC Redux cannot be played out on air? Is it just because its not high quality enough bit rate wise (doesn't news require a minimum of 35 Mb/s)?

I am asking because I would think something that is HD or SD quality on air would be good to re air - especially if it hasn't been transcoded (someone said the transport stream was recorded).

Here in the US plenty of shows (especially comedic shows such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Soup and many of the latenight shows) take clips from services that monitor all the channels and re air them in that quality. For some of the cable channels they may record them themselves using a commercial DVR that allows you to playout via HD-SDI. They take the channels as they receive them from the cable or satellite company of their choice and is ingested. For local news they use a media monitoring service like TVEyes which records all stations in every market of the US in the quality they are broadcast in. They then broadcast the clips as is. Probably 99% of the time there is no difference in picture quality from the live production quality broadcast - if there's a difference its likely because the originating source was not up to par.
PE
penguin_kevin
One question after seeing the Louise Minchin clip above — how did the World side of the N24/World simulcast pre-99 (and therefore before the unified David Lowe sonic identity) sound like? Were separate World and N24 countdowns and bulletin openings played for each channel?
GE
thegeek Founding member
I took this screengrab on Thursday afternoon, but then got side-tracked by work and forgot about it until now. This was from one of the archive headline sequences, showing Chris Eakin and Maxine Mahwinney in N9, the soft set opposite, and - my favourite bit - a sport or weather presenter caught mid-yawn on the wall monitor Smile

*
JA
james-2001
I wonder how much those flatscreen 16:9 screens cost in 1997! Must have been a few thousand, this was the time where a 16:9 CRT would have cost a couple of grand, let alone a flat one!
DV
dvboy
I presume those programmes being trailed for an ungodly hour are because they were BBC World simulcasts?

I think more likely because they were BBC One simulcasts. Note they were programmes that went out around the same time of day as the trailers were broadcast.
IS
Inspector Sands
I cannot find the post but is there any reason why a clip from BBC Redux cannot be played out on air? Is it just because its not high quality enough bit rate wise (doesn't news require a minimum of 35 Mb/s)?

I am asking because I would think something that is HD or SD quality on air would be good to re air - especially if it hasn't been transcoded (someone said the transport stream was recorded).

It could be of absolutely necessary but I think the policy is that it shouldn't be. There would back a quality drop as it's been mpeg encoded already and will go through the process again. But then the news regularly uses poor quality clips off YouTube rather than Redux or the BBCs own archive so I don't think anyone really worries about it.

I think it's more of a problem on radio. Using clips from the ROT system or off air from DAB is a no-no as the extra encoding can add nasty artefacts. Think of a 64kbps mp2 clip being re-encoded into a 128kbps DAB stream.

But then as you say when off air clips of other broadcasters are shown on air, in fact its compulsory as part of the sports rights rules for clips of sport where you aren't the rights holder to take them off air. So you'll see clips of a football match from Sky Sport

The other reason, for the News Channel at least, is because everything will have a ticker and clock on it.


Incidently the standards for BBC programmes can be quite high. For example when they started HD a programme could only be considered HD if there was a certain % of HD native material. And what constituted HD material was quite strict, footage from HDV wasn't for example, nor was HDCAM, as only HDCAM SR recorded to a high enough quality.
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 14 November 2017 8:21pm

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