The Northern Ireland TV Thread

Not quite as embarrassing as the picture going black as happened a couple of weeks ago for the last couple of minutes of the local Grandstand programme just before 5.10pm. C. 2 minutes of black with no visual apology.

Just why exactly was that stupid, awful looking 'BBC SPORT NI' sting ever commissioned?!?! It came in when the national pre-programme BBC SPORT stings were discontinued. It doesn't fit in with BBC SPORT's general look and the bloody logo isn't even in Gill Sans.



Yes and it creates an even more obvious shadow from the presenter. Not sure those huge chairs look right either. They look like something that should come equipped with a plug.

I notice that the awful new sting with the massive 'BBC NEWSLINE' logo and cheesy zoom hasn't appeared on screen in a couple of days.

UTV have the rights to show the North West 200. It took place on Saturday, so WHY ARE WE NOT SEEING ANY COVERAGE UNTIL THURSDAY?!?!

Someone probably took the SCART leads home at the weekend.

To be fair to the dears, I'm pretty sure BBC NI have done the same sort of thing - a highlights package of motor sport/motor racing a few days after the event - on more than one occasion in recent years.

Well yes, with the minor road races they are generally a good few days behind on BBC NI. But this isn't the Carrowdore 100, this is the biggest bike event of the year, and it's just about the only sport that UTV have the rights to. They've been building up to it like mad... just seems a bit odd that it's not shown for days after the event took place - it'd be like having the FA Cup Final highlights shown the following Thursday night.

On another note I'm guessing that all the widescreen cameras went to the NW200, which is why so many reports on UTV Live at the end of last week were 4:3 zoomed...

All that said, when you find the riders doing 201mph the TV coverage is never going to portray anything close to the sense of speed that these guys are actually going.

Well, when it's not produced as an OB because there's so much distance and crews to cover, meaning separate cameras recording onto DVC Pro.

20 or so cameras including the miniDV VXP ones put on the bikes

All the broadcast cameras will have timecodes sync'd at the beginning, presumably to time of day which would make editing those easier. The problem is having to edit in the onboard bike cameras, kerb-cams and helicopter shots which you have to spend time going to find the right time on the tabe. It is a time consuming process, especially depending on how it's edited.

The other thing is you have to view all the tapes first to see what action shots are good and not, as you want to make sure you get any spins, wobbles etc or just good overtaking shots

This year it's being edited in linear fashion, using an Avid would take too much time to have to digitise, and I know they're flat out putting it together, especially when they have to edit the race, add in all graphics etc and then do the voiceover, so it's a big job.

When the BBC do the "insert regional town" road races there's about 5 cameras which makes life a hell of alot easier - when you've got twenty then well... it's massive.

I've edited racing cars with 5 cameras and that took a day and a half for one race with 7 laps, and that was using an Avid with muti-camera option.

I'm not sticking up here, just providing a fair point as to the delay from event to TX

In other words they just sent a load of crews out to take whatever pics they liked, then edited it all together so it looked like proper coverage!

I know that's a bit simplistic, and I'm not saying it's easy - but 5 days after it took place a lot of the momentum of the event has been lost.

Better late than never - it probably will take a few days' hard work to compile and produce the two hour long NW200 shows.

Will UTV's highlights programme also get a showing on Men and Motors this year? I spotted UTV's 2003 programmes on M&M, only spotted them when I was flicking through the EPG... I don't watch that channel as a rule

On a different note...

Whose idea was it to take off The Weakest Link on BBC TWO NI (analogue and digital) and replace it with John Daly's Bankraider? I want my daily dose of Anne Robinson

Three words:
Party
Election
Broadasts

Annie will be back tomorrow (Wednesday).

It's actually alot more complicated than that but basically yes. It is proper coverage, as it's been in the planning for weeks, such as camera locations, where to build stands for the cameras, reports, profiles etc all have to be organised, aswell as getting microcam - the on board people - sorted with what they need to film and where to film it.

As to momentum, well... your keen to see it so I guess those who want to see it will well... watch it.

To cover that well... as live would be ridiculously expensive, particularly with getting feeds back of all the cameras all over the course, lots of cabling and lots of microwave links, and then if you did that, or showed it live.

Although saying that Channel 4 have had World Rally Cars live stages before, but then that's slightly different than this!

Would be interesting to see done live though.

Peter

A.J.A.:
"Three words:

Party
Election
Broadasts"

So this will be going on for a few weeks then...

btw Have UTV produced the PEBs for the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein? They look very much like a UTV production.

Gone are the days when you'd have the party leader in the studio for a five minute monologue reading off autocue...

All the PEBs are independent productions...

On the subject of UTV and the NorthWest 200, UTV during Friday and Saturday must have borrowed BBC Northern Irelands crane for a vantage point right above the pitts. Does this usually happen with BBC Northern Ireland and Ulster Television?
Also UTV having exclusive rights give live links from some of their cameras live on the internet through the local radio station's (Q97.2FM) NW200 website northwest200.fm