Kryn's posts

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KR
Kryn

BBC World News - to 14th January 2013

INTERESTING:'This Week' to Air on BBC World Starting Sunday


This probably means no BBC World News as a rolling news channel in the States for further long time. Sigh.
KR
Kryn

BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

Can't get onto the article because its subscription only, but one of the headlines on broadcastnow.co.uk is that Carole Walker will be one of the female over-50 presenters (though she has occasionally done presenting in the past)


So, I wonder if this means a regular news channel slot, or just more relief presenting? I can't quite see at the moment where all 4 of them will fit in, especially Zeinab, who presumably will continue on BBC World as well, as there doesn't really seem any shortage of female presenters on BBC News currently.


Yeah, I don't get this one. BBC was accused of not having older women and so Thompson decided to look specifically for older women. What happened to simply defending your product? Or the Perfectly Reasonable Response that news positions are filled on merit and not miscellaneous criteria? What they did isn't bad, but is in effect saying, "guilty as charged."

What's silly is that the same time this happened, Jezza Hunt suggested that BBC specifically hire Tories to offset some kind of perceived bias and on that occasion BBC did produce the Perfectly Reasonable Response.
KR
Kryn

The X Factor - Series 6

Honestly, I feel like I'm the only person who feels that (*dramatic music*) PEETAH DICKSON AND HIS NOOO INDOOR VOYCE (*swoooooowsh*) thing is now totally played out. I didn't really notice it or care for most of the series until the end, where the three contestants came out three times a piece.

Though it may be because of the Dermot episode of Buzzcocks where Dickson recorded all sorts of announcements and Dermot was constantly smacking that soundboard.

One thing you can't deny, though, this show has a whole lot of filler time, probably to add an extra advert break or two that ITV can charge high rates for.
KR
Kryn

ITV Discussion Thread

I think the point of BBC HD's idents is to show off the technology, as well as reinforce the diamond logo, is it not?

I never saw the blue/yellow logo in action, but I prefer what ITV has going now as far as identity. The old logo seems very "this is the information age now so we better look high tech" whereas the current one is more in tune with the lower-case, sans-serif image, casual image that mass-market companies try to communicate these days. The BBC have simplified their logo over the decades to the point where the present one is absolutely timeless and could look current for the next 100 years, but even they try it with BBC3's logo and their news site commercials.

What I wish they would do, if they make new idents for anything, is un-3D the ITV2 logo and make a larger variety of idents for it. The rest of it's presentation is alright but something about the angled logo looks wrong to me. It looks very out of place sitting with the rest of the family.
KR
Kryn

Project Canvas 'YouView' Trust approved

Yeah, that's what you'd think but they'll resemble US cable more and more as time goes on. If you have satellite in the US then you can't get very good coverage of some sports teams because cable giant Comcast owns numerous city stations and a national and keeps ripping them off the satellites for more negotiation hardball. While they hold out for money, frustrated fans who can get out of their subscriptions switch to cable so they win either way.

In the case of Sky, they'll probably begin by putting their non-sport stuff on their while telling sports fans to buy a dish, and if they get outbid and games start showing online then they'll pull their other content from it. That vertical monopoly strategy is pretty effective.

I'm still curious to know how this Canvas stuff is going to interfere with bandwidth capping. How will BT and the like will respond when every nan and granddad in the country who only ever checks their mail and watches some videos of cats, begins consuming as much data as a BitTorrent user?
KR
Kryn

International Presentation

The NewsHour has been around for decades, they were just going to change the name of the show and throw an extra newsreader in there since long timer presenter Jim Lehrer is close to retirement and his name is in the title.

However, they announced those changes in May for September, and as of yesterday never changed a thing. I think they scrapped it.
KR
Kryn

Project Canvas 'YouView' Trust approved

Doesn't BSB have their fingers in quite a few pies? As far as I've been able to tell, what a lot of people buy Sky for is their access to sports and some other channels that they also run. So long as they don't opt to offer these things on Canvas, and nobody is going to force them to, the audience who wants those things will buy whatever they need to just as they do now.
KR
Kryn

The X Factor - Series 6

I don't understand why anyone says that the set or grandiosity should be scaled down. I thought those kinds of comments were reserved for shows funded by licensing. It's one of the few things on ITV that looks respectable in any continent. The point is to take these no-name kids and make them look like stars by way of elaborate lighting and choirs and fireworks and dancers and fog rolling across the floor and whatnot.

Actually, X-Factor and The Cube are the two shows where the production values seem so good that you could confuse it for being the BBC (though that speaks unfortunate volumes about BBC's reliance on these kinds of shows.) I'm new to UK television (well, beyond the occasional import and remake) and when I first started watching ITV some months ago, you had garbage like Aussie Ladette to Lady in a prime block before the Ten! ITV kind of reminds me of the US ABC: if they don't have their few big budget marquee shows (Lost, FlashForward, etc) then they look kind of rubbish compared to the other stations.

If ITV/Cowell/Whoever wanted to save money, I'd say they should invest less in American stars who don't know what the heck is going on.

As far as who wins, IMO Joe and Olly are the two with talent but the audience seems to like Danyl enough that he'll probably make second.
KR
Kryn

BBC World News: Presentation

To touch on the US and BBC World, some viewers do get the channel, but to talk about the number of viewers because of PBS stations is a bit absurd. PBS is a large network, but each station (and in any city given the number of communities and amount of public TV volunteer donating, you may see anywhere from one to four PBS stations on your schedule at once). They're all independently programmed, and so depending on the city you might not get any BBC World.

Even in San Francisco, which is pretty heavily saturated with public media, affiliate KQED runs a 30 minute bulletin recorded at some point in the day and repeated over and over (same newsreader, same "broadcasting on PBS in America and around the globe" opener.) That's a bit of a disappointment.

Furthermore, BBC Worldwide decided to limit the amount of access to the World News by amending their contracts so that only one PBS affiliate in any region can have a license to run World News. So while KQED does run it in San Francisco, other stations nearby like KRCB or KCSM couldn't. As you could expect, this amendment tends to favour the wealthiest/largest affiliate.

To top it all off, just because it's in households doesn't often mean anyone is watching it. The PBS specialty is "programmes that no profit-seeking enterprise would afford to run," or at least that's what they tell you when they ask for funding. Most Americans associate PBS with educational content, complemented with things most wouldn't ever be bothered to see like three hour operas.
KR
Kryn

The X Factor - Series 6

While it was amusing at first, I'm getting tired of the LOUD VOICE YELLING OUT NAMES every time someone comes out the door. That the judges get introduced twice (once by LOUD VOICE, once by Dermot) makes it seem even more filler.

If you wanted to replace any of the regular fixtures, I'd go with Dannii, though Cheryl will probably go anyway if she's serious about a career relaunch anyway, and Dermot (who seems a bit off for some reason, though probably as a Yank it's that I'm used to Ryan Seacrest who makes Dermot seem rough.)

My guess is that Lloyd will go next week, then Ollie, then Stacey. That leaves a finale of Joe, Danyl, and the twins. J+E third, Danyl runnerup, Joe wins.
KR
Kryn

[Canada] CBC News

Well, for those interested, this re-do has been disastrous for the CBC. Out of all responses, I'd say about 99% or so are the most negative. At first people were grousing about all the money invested in DOGs, and the amount of money invested in them with so many journalists out of work. The other problem is that the channel now resembles CNN with moving show logos and such in the bottom right, and Canadians generally have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything perceived as becoming More American. Finally, there's a wide belief that the news content has been severely watered down.

Even the CBC's own comedy shows are starting to take the mick out of it, though they've been gentle and simply gone after the lack of anywhere for people to sit down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJqZutRDWg
KR
Kryn

ITV News

I agree with Square Eyes above. I just watched the open and the room looks like they borrowed a set from The Fifth Element . Less traffic lines on the set and fewer, moving images on the opening animation would make it much improved.

Music is okay. I kind of miss the dramatic horns at the end, though. They were sort of the musical equivalent of a voice of god.