The Newsroom

Changes to BBC Parliament & Political Programming

(July 2018)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
CH
chris
chris posted:
Definitely a recent decision to move Marr to 10:




It’s as if when ITV announced they were leaving the ten o’clock slot, the BBC seized the opportunity. Now where have we heard that story before?


I think it was FAR more to do with the Premier League highlights rules changing this season.

Peston really didn't trouble Marr in ratings terms, and Marr was at 0900 for a long time before Peston launched.

This was almost certainly a channel decision to move Match of The Day to a later slot to increase ratings for it.


It was just a joke.
RD
RDJ
Network announcement acknowledging BBC One HD showing Sunday Politics Midlands. Also played out in the Midlands too which caused a bit of confusion.

Patrick acknowledged the whole country watching on BBC One HD at the start of the show. Also seems to be going out live for once too.
DV
dvboy
I'd be surprised if they pre-recorded it during Tory Conference weekend.
NG
noggin Founding member
RDJ posted:
Network announcement acknowledging BBC One HD showing Sunday Politics Midlands. Also played out in the Midlands too which caused a bit of confusion.

Patrick acknowledged the whole country watching on BBC One HD at the start of the show. Also seems to be going out live for once too.


Yep - it's much trickier to handle this situation for live shows than for Inside Out (where network will have their own copy of the show to Playout on BBC One HD, and the regions can continue to opt-out as normal and do local presentation - even in the region playing out the show on BBC One HD)

For a live show - this isn't so easy - the neatest and safest solution if you want bespoke local presentation and to avoid a network howl round or crashed idents is to run two galleries to get the local show on-air.

The output of the main gallery feeds BBC One HD Playout AND the a local presentation gallery, with the main gallery starting the show at an agreed time. This would require someone to staff the presentation gallery (but probably only one person). It would avoid the nightmare of the region having to crash opt (you can't safely line-up and soft-opt if you are feeding yourself back down to Network) and also remove the chance of network clipping your local ident.

Not all regions still have two galleries - but many do - and that would be a neat way of solving the issue I'd imagine?
IS
Inspector Sands

The output of the main gallery feeds BBC One HD Playout AND the a local presentation gallery, with the main gallery starting the show at an agreed time. This would require someone to staff the presentation gallery (but probably only one person). It would avoid the nightmare of the region having to crash opt (you can't safely line-up and soft-opt if you are feeding yourself back down to Network) and also remove the chance of network clipping your local ident

Something similar used to happen in London for the early days of The Politics Show (as it was originally known). They had the same issue because the announcer made a similar announcement about switching to analogue for your local programme, but no point putting that out in London as analogue viewers there were getting the correct version of the programme.


Problem was that their Politics Show inserts were from City Hall and the went straight into pres as an OB so there was no one in their gallery. Therefore someone had to go in to opt out just for the announcement and opt back 10 seconds later for the start of the programme.

Saw it a couple of times and it looked a bit messy, very little margin for error
Last edited by Inspector Sands on 30 September 2018 9:12pm
WL
W1LL
Noticed that “Today at Conference” has been using the Politics Live music and has an altered version of their titles (two sets for both conferences) - which look pretty suave for a rather niche late-night programme. Did they used to use the Daily Politics branding in previous years?
CR
Critique
Noticed that “Today at Conference” has been using the Politics Live music and has an altered version of their titles (two sets for both conferences) - which look pretty suave for a rather niche late-night programme. Did they used to use the Daily Politics branding in previous years?


I *think* in the past they used some of the Daily Politics music but fairly basic title cards (Gill Sans over a shot of the conference venue)?
GE
thegeek Founding member


tightrope78, London Lite and bilky asko gave kudos
BR
Brekkie
So cuts will be made to something people actually watch instead.
IT
itsrobert Founding member
Ha! Funny how politicians are quite happy to make swingeing cuts to public services but as soon as it affects them, they're all cancelled!
WO
Worzel
Here's the full statement...

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/bbc-written-evidence/
NE
Newsroom24
While I do understand that it is sort of the BBC's responsibility to have a channel for political topics, I really do wonder of the benefit of even having a BBC Parliament channel given its overall popularity/worth. Some of the content featured could quite easily be scrapped (given I can't imagine many watch it) and the more popular content shown online (on BBC iPlayer and/or YouTube). The most relevant content could be shown on the BBC News channel.

I understand that this is unlikely to happen (given the opposition of a small number) and the fact it is arguably providing a public service but I do feel that a better public service could probably be provided by investing in other areas of the BBC.

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