The BBC Sport presentation team is far too fat, most of the presenters are under utilised or limited to one or two niche sports.
In line with their declining sports portfolio, I think the on screen presentation team should be limited to a core of about 6 faces.
But why is it a bad thing to have presenters who specialise in one or two sports? You do far more damage to your brand by shoehorning in a presenter who knows nothing about the subject, see Ortis Deeley on the athletics, than you do having numerous presenters for different sports.
That could actually mean BBC Choice, but they've just decided to list it as BBC Three anyway as its practically the same channel.
It obviously means BBC Choice but it doesn't say that, it says BBC Three, the two are completely different channels.
Other pages happily list BBC Choice so this is a mistake.
BBC Choice and BBC Three are not totally different at all. BBC Choice had a revamp in 2000, and at this point became basically a BBC Three prototype. Some programmes aired in late 2001 had been intended for BBC Three before it's launch was postponed.
Wikipedia posted:
Post-2000 retooling
In June 2000, the BBC radically changed its digital channel formats. The initial format had seen BBC Choice target a similar mixed audience to BBC One and Two with a general entertainment skew, with BBC Knowledge focusing on educational and informative programming. From 2000 both Knowledge and Choice became targeted to more specific audiences, with Knowledge moving to a broader documentary and culture mix and Choice focusing on developing a stronger relationship with the young adult audience, an audience the BBC had historically had difficulty in reaching. BBC Choice abandoned many of its original programmes such as Backstage, and aimed at younger people, with most of the early part of the schedules being made up of fifteen-minute programmes under the banner of "Refreshing TV" or "Micro TV". Entertainment news magazine "Liquid News", presented by Christopher Price, evolved out of News 24's "Zero 30" and became the channel's flagship show.
Announcement of the end of BBC Choice
In August 2000, the BBC announced that it would replace BBC Choice as soon as possible with BBC Three, which would be a continuation of the "youth" aspect of the new BBC Choice. But the government delayed approving the relaunch, which formed part of wider plans to reshape the BBC's digital provision, plans which also included the proposed BBC Four, two children's channels and five digital radio stations. Whilst BBC Three was delayed, the other proposals gained the approval of Parliament and the new channels went on air in 2002, meaning BBC Four launched prior to BBC Three. From October 2001, BBC Choice began screening a significant amount of new, young-skewing programming, the kind of content that had been earmarked for BBC Three.
Also, I think the orange cubes ident was meant for BBC Three.
I'm afraid they are different channels, from the length of time they're on air to the type of programming they show(ed). You wouldn't have a repeat of a BBC One docusoap on BBC Three as you did on BBC Choice, nor do you have reams on children's programming on BBC Three.
The whole reason the channel launch got caught up in government was because they were proposing launching a brand new channel with fresh aims, targeting a different audience. If it was the same service they'd have just changed the name and that would have been that, ala News 24 into the News channel.
Choice was merely a catch-up service showing repeats from other BBC channels with some new programming thrown in. Virtually everything Three shows is made by or exclusive to the channel, Doctor Who, Top Gear and Eastenders are about the only things left that are shown on another BBC station.
Regardless of the fact the channel changed its programming towards the end, it was a different channel. The changing output towards the end was merely to soften viewers for the change to BBC Three, even then in its final week they had an evening showing back-to-back Alan Partridge, that sort of thing has never had a place on BBC Three.
As before the refresh, Friday's programme had a slightly different layout. The same set-up as last night's This Week, which itself retains the same titles, astons etc. as it had before Christmas.
After one week I think the new look is working, the set looks far better, as do the on-screen graphics. The theme tune is still rather limp but apart from that they've done a good job. It'll be interesting to see how The Sunday Politics is handled, as it will when the regular programme increases to one hour.
In a few cases, a programme being added into /programmes and then subsequently repeated on television has unfortunately led to a 'doubling up' of episodes, as seen on the Civilisation site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dtjbv/episodes/guide
The weekday editions of the Daily Politics are remaining at Millbank.
Given they struggle to get the politicians to make it there on time when it's barely a 10 minute walk from Parliament, what chance would they have stuck out at TVC?
Oh, and the new titles are much better with the last theme tune, although obviously the music/titles would need to be edited slightly as they're different lengths.
I don't think the title sequence is that bad, although it is quite long for what is essentially the same idea repeated several times for the different letters.
The music is the issue, the old theme was much better, more appropriate to the subject and quite catchy, this is very dull in comparison.
Has anyone seen ITV2 is repeating Jack and the Beanstalk from 1998 again this year? It still has the original LWT endcap, with a URL pointing to virtualchristmas.itv.co.uk or something.
Does anyone remember what this was?
It's up on ITV Player and the address given on screen is the snappy www.itv.virtualchristmas.co.uk. It's unsurprisingly dead now.
It's on a black background so it'd be easy enough to cover up, presumably nobody ever imagined they'd want to repeat such a horrifically poor programme so have never bothered.
Yes, I suspect there will be a little more flexibility allowed, which is always useful.
I'd presume this means the Thursday programme will come under the Daily Politics brand rather than the strange Politics Scotland set-up they have at present where they have similar opening titles and graphics but different music and a different programme name.
No word on what will happen to the separate Wednesday afternoon show.
Channel 4 are introducing some of the adverts during British Comedy Awards 2011 by giving them awards, "Best use of a smoking jacket", "Best facial hair" etc. They promised more of the same during the second break.
EDIT
: Odd situation with The Comedy Awards. It has clearly overrun but rather then sticking with it, it has transferred to E4 and so British Comedy Awards Live Lock In will either have to drop some items to finish at the scheduled 00:10 or overrun.
Don't they always present a couple of awards on the E4 show? Certainly they seemed to be behind at one point but hurried through a couple of awards and dropped the long breakbumpers for one of the breaks in order to finish on time. To me it seemed to have went all as planned.