AN
CNN's Anderson Cooper Holiday Story
Could this be David H's American reincarnation?
AN
News 24 is much more watchable. I find myself viewing it far more than before.
The studio is excellent - I like the different parts to it and the varying uses for each area.
Presentationally a lot friendlier - much more "banter" between the presenters.
The graphics suite is far better, save for the large headlines.
Sky News finally have some competition, as the revamp is far more than just studio and graphical style.
BBC News 24 Relaunch
One Week OnNews 24 is much more watchable. I find myself viewing it far more than before.
The studio is excellent - I like the different parts to it and the varying uses for each area.
Presentationally a lot friendlier - much more "banter" between the presenters.
The graphics suite is far better, save for the large headlines.
Sky News finally have some competition, as the revamp is far more than just studio and graphical style.
AN
BBC News 24 Relaunch
BBC News Special on BBC2 has a different DOG than News 24.
AN
Classic example of a clueless response...
I'd be quite interested to know how SE's response is clueless too.
Enlighten us, Mr Luxton.
Christmas Idents Thread 2003
Square Eyes posted:
Simon_Luxton posted:
Or doesn't your set have such new fangled gizmos ?
Classic example of a clueless response...
I'd be quite interested to know how SE's response is clueless too.
Enlighten us, Mr Luxton.
AN
Agreed!
Do any members of the board work for the BBC?
Ash Burger posted:
I don't think there are any normal people here, noggin.
Agreed!
AN
Well a nice bit of music always used to set me up for the day before school. Once 4-Tel made way for breakfast TV, BBC2 stepped into the breach with breakfast Ceefax.
I can appreciate the music thing (I have a soft spot for VH1 Classic in the morning), but why can't you just listen to some CDs and put your TV onto the page where it scrolls through the headlines.
You could even do the announcements beforehand.....
"Now on BBC Luxton, Pages From Ceefax. Please note that the BBC does endorse any particular brand of toilet tissue for any 'accidents' caused during this transmission."
Yes, I do have them. Doesn't everyone normal?
New look Mornings on Channel 4 Television
Simon_Luxton posted:
Well a nice bit of music always used to set me up for the day before school. Once 4-Tel made way for breakfast TV, BBC2 stepped into the breach with breakfast Ceefax.
I can appreciate the music thing (I have a soft spot for VH1 Classic in the morning), but why can't you just listen to some CDs and put your TV onto the page where it scrolls through the headlines.
You could even do the announcements beforehand.....
"Now on BBC Luxton, Pages From Ceefax. Please note that the BBC does endorse any particular brand of toilet tissue for any 'accidents' caused during this transmission."
Quote:
Ah, knew he couldn't resist his carnal urges...
Yes, I do have them. Doesn't everyone normal?
AN
SImon, are you seriously suggesting you would rather watch Pages from Teletext on 4 when you're getting ready for work than a TV programme?
I must admit that I dislike US comedy, so the line-up doesn't really appeal to me either.
I would hardly describe the scheduling of 2 hours of teletext as imaginative.
Simon, you need to speak with someone professional (be it a psychologist or a prostitute) soon.
New look Mornings on Channel 4 Television
Simon_Luxton posted:
I realise that 4-Tel may be no more but I suppose this means a 2-hour block of its replacement, Teletext on 4, is out of the question... 
How unimaginitive. At least bring back the C4 Daily.
How unimaginitive. At least bring back the C4 Daily.
SImon, are you seriously suggesting you would rather watch Pages from Teletext on 4 when you're getting ready for work than a TV programme?
I must admit that I dislike US comedy, so the line-up doesn't really appeal to me either.
I would hardly describe the scheduling of 2 hours of teletext as imaginative.
Simon, you need to speak with someone professional (be it a psychologist or a prostitute) soon.
AN
Anyone care to make any suggestions, or will all the same faces make all the same old bitches?
BBC News 24 Relaunch
Just how else are they meant to promote the multiscreen service?Anyone care to make any suggestions, or will all the same faces make all the same old bitches?
AN
John Pilger
12/05/03: Greg Dyke, the BBC’s director general, has attacked American television reporting of Iraq. "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." He said research showed that, of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq, only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty."
Did Dyke say all this with a straight face? Let’s look at what research shows about the BBC’s reporting of Iraq. Media Tenor, the non-partisan, Bonn-based media research organisation, has examined the Iraq war reporting of some of the world’s leading broadcasters, including the US networks and the BBC. It concentrated on the coverage of opposition to the war.
The second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices was ABC in the United States, which allowed them a mere 7 per cent of its overall coverage. The worst case was the BBC, which gave just 2 per cent of its coverage to opposition views – views that represented those of the majority of the British people. A separate study by Cardiff University came to the same conclusion. The BBC, it said, had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any [British] broadcaster."
Consider the first Newsnight broadcast after the greatest political demonstration in British history on 15 February. The studio discussion was confined to interviews with a Tory member of the House of Lords, a Tory MP, an Oxford don, an LSE professor, a commentator from the Times and the views of the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Not one marcher was invited to participate, not one representative of the two million who had filled London in protest. Instead, a political reporter, David Grossman, asked perversely: "What about the millions who didn’t march? Was going to the DIY store or watching the football on Saturday a demonstration of support for the government?"
A constant theme of the BBC’s Iraq coverage is that Anglo-American policy, although capable of "blunders," is essentially benign, even noble. Thus, amazingly, Matt Frei, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, declared on 13 April: "There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power." The same "good" military power had just slaughtered at least 15,000 people in an illegal, unprovoked attack on a largely defenceless country.
No doubt touched by this goodness, Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark asked General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, if "coalition" troops "are really powerless to help civilians targeted by Iraqi forces in Basra." Clearly, she felt no need to check the veracity of the British claim that Iraqi forces had been targeting civilians in Basra, a claim that proved to be baseless propaganda.
During the bombing of Serbia in 1999, Wark interviewed another general, Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis – had just been sprayed with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children caught in the open: the horrific handiwork of one of Nato’s "precision-guided" missiles, of which only 2 per cent hit military targets. Wark asked not a single question about this, or about any civilian deaths.
These are not isolated examples, but the BBC "style." What matters is that the received wisdom dominates and is protected. When a US missile killed 62 people at a market in Baghdad, BBC News affected a fake "who can tell who’s responsible?" neutrality, a standard technique when the atrocity is "ours." On Newsnight, a BBC commentator dismissed the carnage with these words: "It’s a war after all... But the coalition aim is to unseat Saddam Hussein by winning hearts and minds." His voice trailed over images of grieving relatives.
Regardless of the spat over Andrew Gilligan’s attempt to tell the truth about the Blair government’s lying, the BBC’s amplifying of government lies about a "threat" from Iraq was routine. Typically on 7 January, BBC1’s 6pm news bulletin reported that British army reservists were being called up "to deal with the continuing threat posed by Iraq." What threat?
During the 1991 Gulf war, BBC audiences were told incessantly about "surgical strikes" so precise that war had become almost a bloodless science. David Dimbleby asked the US ambassador: "Isn’t it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we’ve seen, is the only potential world policeman?"
Dimbleby, like his news colleagues, had been conned; most of the weapons had missed their military targets and killed civilians.
In 1991, according to the Guardian, the BBC told its broadcasters to be "circumspect" about pictures of civilian death and injury. This may explain why the BBC offered us only glimpses of the horrific truth – that the Americans were systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and conducting a one-sided slaughter. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children had died in the "surgical" assault and its immediate aftermath.
An archive search has failed to turn up a single BBC item reporting this. Similarly, a search of the BBC’s coverage of the causes and effects of the 13-year embargo on Iraq has failed to produce a single report spelling out that which Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, put so succinctly when asked if the deaths of half a million children were a price worth paying for sanctions. "We think the price is worth it," she replied.
There was plenty of vilifying of the "Beast of Baghdad," but nothing on the fact that, up to July 2002, the United States was deliberately blocking more than $5bn worth of humanitarian and reconstruction aid reaching Iraq – aid approved by the UN Security Council and paid for by Iraq. I recently asked a well-known BBC correspondent about this, and he replied: "I’ve tried, but they’re not interested."
There are honourable exceptions to all this, of course; but just as BBC production values have few equals, so do its self-serving myths about objectivity, impartiality and balance have few equals – myths that have demonstrated their stamina since the 1920s, when John Reith, the BBC’s first director general, secretly wrote propaganda for the Tory Baldwin government during the General Strike and noted in his diaries that impartiality was a principle to be suspended whenever the established order and its consensus were threatened.
Thus, The War Game, Peter Watkins’s brilliant film for the BBC about the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain, was suppressed for 20 years. In 1965, the chairman of the BBC’s board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, secretly warned the Wilson government that "the showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent."
Generally speaking, outright bans are unnecessary, because "going too far," which Watkins did, is discouraged by background and training. That the BBC, like most of the Anglo-American media, reports the fate of whole societies according to their usefulness to "us," the euphemism for western power, and works diligently to minimise the culpability of British governments in great crimes, is self-evident and certainly unconspiratorial. It is simply part of a rich tradition.
Copyright John Pilger
The BBC & Iraq: Myth and Reality
The BBC And Iraq: Myth and RealityJohn Pilger
12/05/03: Greg Dyke, the BBC’s director general, has attacked American television reporting of Iraq. "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility," he said. "They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." He said research showed that, of 840 experts interviewed on American news programmes during the invasion of Iraq, only four opposed the war. "If that were true in Britain, the BBC would have failed in its duty."
Did Dyke say all this with a straight face? Let’s look at what research shows about the BBC’s reporting of Iraq. Media Tenor, the non-partisan, Bonn-based media research organisation, has examined the Iraq war reporting of some of the world’s leading broadcasters, including the US networks and the BBC. It concentrated on the coverage of opposition to the war.
The second-worst case of denying access to anti-war voices was ABC in the United States, which allowed them a mere 7 per cent of its overall coverage. The worst case was the BBC, which gave just 2 per cent of its coverage to opposition views – views that represented those of the majority of the British people. A separate study by Cardiff University came to the same conclusion. The BBC, it said, had "displayed the most pro-war agenda of any [British] broadcaster."
Consider the first Newsnight broadcast after the greatest political demonstration in British history on 15 February. The studio discussion was confined to interviews with a Tory member of the House of Lords, a Tory MP, an Oxford don, an LSE professor, a commentator from the Times and the views of the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Not one marcher was invited to participate, not one representative of the two million who had filled London in protest. Instead, a political reporter, David Grossman, asked perversely: "What about the millions who didn’t march? Was going to the DIY store or watching the football on Saturday a demonstration of support for the government?"
A constant theme of the BBC’s Iraq coverage is that Anglo-American policy, although capable of "blunders," is essentially benign, even noble. Thus, amazingly, Matt Frei, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, declared on 13 April: "There’s no doubt that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power." The same "good" military power had just slaughtered at least 15,000 people in an illegal, unprovoked attack on a largely defenceless country.
No doubt touched by this goodness, Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark asked General Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of the General Staff, if "coalition" troops "are really powerless to help civilians targeted by Iraqi forces in Basra." Clearly, she felt no need to check the veracity of the British claim that Iraqi forces had been targeting civilians in Basra, a claim that proved to be baseless propaganda.
During the bombing of Serbia in 1999, Wark interviewed another general, Wesley Clark, the Nato commander. The Serbian city of Nis – had just been sprayed with American cluster bombs, killing women, old people and children caught in the open: the horrific handiwork of one of Nato’s "precision-guided" missiles, of which only 2 per cent hit military targets. Wark asked not a single question about this, or about any civilian deaths.
These are not isolated examples, but the BBC "style." What matters is that the received wisdom dominates and is protected. When a US missile killed 62 people at a market in Baghdad, BBC News affected a fake "who can tell who’s responsible?" neutrality, a standard technique when the atrocity is "ours." On Newsnight, a BBC commentator dismissed the carnage with these words: "It’s a war after all... But the coalition aim is to unseat Saddam Hussein by winning hearts and minds." His voice trailed over images of grieving relatives.
Regardless of the spat over Andrew Gilligan’s attempt to tell the truth about the Blair government’s lying, the BBC’s amplifying of government lies about a "threat" from Iraq was routine. Typically on 7 January, BBC1’s 6pm news bulletin reported that British army reservists were being called up "to deal with the continuing threat posed by Iraq." What threat?
During the 1991 Gulf war, BBC audiences were told incessantly about "surgical strikes" so precise that war had become almost a bloodless science. David Dimbleby asked the US ambassador: "Isn’t it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we’ve seen, is the only potential world policeman?"
Dimbleby, like his news colleagues, had been conned; most of the weapons had missed their military targets and killed civilians.
In 1991, according to the Guardian, the BBC told its broadcasters to be "circumspect" about pictures of civilian death and injury. This may explain why the BBC offered us only glimpses of the horrific truth – that the Americans were systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and conducting a one-sided slaughter. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children had died in the "surgical" assault and its immediate aftermath.
An archive search has failed to turn up a single BBC item reporting this. Similarly, a search of the BBC’s coverage of the causes and effects of the 13-year embargo on Iraq has failed to produce a single report spelling out that which Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, put so succinctly when asked if the deaths of half a million children were a price worth paying for sanctions. "We think the price is worth it," she replied.
There was plenty of vilifying of the "Beast of Baghdad," but nothing on the fact that, up to July 2002, the United States was deliberately blocking more than $5bn worth of humanitarian and reconstruction aid reaching Iraq – aid approved by the UN Security Council and paid for by Iraq. I recently asked a well-known BBC correspondent about this, and he replied: "I’ve tried, but they’re not interested."
There are honourable exceptions to all this, of course; but just as BBC production values have few equals, so do its self-serving myths about objectivity, impartiality and balance have few equals – myths that have demonstrated their stamina since the 1920s, when John Reith, the BBC’s first director general, secretly wrote propaganda for the Tory Baldwin government during the General Strike and noted in his diaries that impartiality was a principle to be suspended whenever the established order and its consensus were threatened.
Thus, The War Game, Peter Watkins’s brilliant film for the BBC about the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain, was suppressed for 20 years. In 1965, the chairman of the BBC’s board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, secretly warned the Wilson government that "the showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent."
Generally speaking, outright bans are unnecessary, because "going too far," which Watkins did, is discouraged by background and training. That the BBC, like most of the Anglo-American media, reports the fate of whole societies according to their usefulness to "us," the euphemism for western power, and works diligently to minimise the culpability of British governments in great crimes, is self-evident and certainly unconspiratorial. It is simply part of a rich tradition.
Copyright John Pilger
AN
Mmm....Gillian.
I saw her do an OB the other day however and she looks a lot better under the studio lights. However, even without those, she is a fine looking wench.
BBC News thread
With Me, Tim Wilcox posted:
....and of course the wonderful Gillian Ni Cheallaigh with her sexy Irish accent - mmmm.
Mmm....Gillian.
I saw her do an OB the other day however and she looks a lot better under the studio lights. However, even without those, she is a fine looking wench.
AN
Your posts are always good, noggin. What kind of chaos will the BBC News centre be in at the moment for the change? And will this increase the chances of cock-ups during the evening?
BBC News thread
noggin posted:
Suspect the yellow headline wipe was just a last minute thing - World will presumably have been cutting their headlines to their 'bongs' when they have been in that studio - so they wouldn't have needed the wipe until now. I suspect that is a quick "pretty close" copy they set-up in the absence of the looping logo that is normally used.
Your posts are always good, noggin. What kind of chaos will the BBC News centre be in at the moment for the change? And will this increase the chances of cock-ups during the evening?
AN
Tim, I just try to deny my inherent geekiness but, tonight, it forces me to stay up half the night to see if the astons are different! I know the change is happening at 9 in the morning, but my geeky side is ordering me to stay up. And I've got a busy work day tomorrow!
I much preferred the old BBC World title music - they only used the current one on "The World Today" for a long time, and the other bulletins has their own theme music. I can't remember when, but they all took TWT's theme tune some time ago.
BBC News thread
With Me, Tim Wilcox posted:
Johnnyboy, I always stay up to see the simulcast cos its the only time u get to see the BBC World titles and music. Am often disappointed however when they play the N24 bed when updating headlines or "in brief" rather than the proper BBC World bed.
Might have to stay up until 2 now to see and hear the BBC World titles with full bass for the last time
- has a very powerful crash at the end of the titles before going into the fade... the fade itself is much better than the "old" N24, consisting of two pulses in quick succession, with a longer pause before the two pulses again... well cool...
Might have to stay up until 2 now to see and hear the BBC World titles with full bass for the last time
- has a very powerful crash at the end of the titles before going into the fade... the fade itself is much better than the "old" N24, consisting of two pulses in quick succession, with a longer pause before the two pulses again... well cool...
Tim, I just try to deny my inherent geekiness but, tonight, it forces me to stay up half the night to see if the astons are different! I know the change is happening at 9 in the morning, but my geeky side is ordering me to stay up. And I've got a busy work day tomorrow!
I much preferred the old BBC World title music - they only used the current one on "The World Today" for a long time, and the other bulletins has their own theme music. I can't remember when, but they all took TWT's theme tune some time ago.