eoin's posts, page 9

The Sport Thread

I don't think the wide shot will last. The Sport studio is gorgeous, and it's nice to show it off, but it interrupts the flow of the programme, and leaves no opportunity for interaction between the news presenters in London and the sports news presenter in Salford. It jars a little if the duo in London have just been chatting between themselves, then throw to Salford without so much as a hello.

Not that I'm expecting 'banter', as that would probably just be awkward nine times out of ten, but a quick reference to the top sports story from the London presenter or a simple hello would be nice.

BBC WORLD NEWS 2012

I really like the blue on the titles with a white background. With a black background (your WNA example) I don't really think it works.

Eurovision 2012 - 22/24/26 May 2012

Maybe not, but it reflects an attitude.


FYP

Eurovision 2012 - 22/24/26 May 2012

It was appallingly produced and dull as dishwater. What was most irritating about this was that someone had clearly had some ideas about giving the selection process some sort of sense of occasion. There was a green room of sorts, spokespersons for regional juries and yes, the mentor thing, which could have worked if we'd been given some background info on the song, the writer and how they'd found the singer, perhaps in the form of a VT. Some reason to actually care about who this person was, or at least keep things visually interesting, rather than just plonking them on the edge of the audience and having Ryan Tubridy stand over them with a mic.

The green room was on screen for about 1 minute in total I'd say. Maybe those presenters who were employed to stand in front of a green screen pretending to be in different cities might have been better utilised in actually chatting to the acts. Their presentation of the jury results, despite being delivered seemingly at lightning-speed, lacked any pace or excitement. The little elements where someone had at least made a half-arsed attempt to make things exciting, like Jedward's lap of honour from the green room to the studio, jarred with and were undermined by the lacklustre feel to the whole evening.

The production of the actual performances themselves was so dreadful that the talking heads actually said so on several occasions, to a response from Tubridy along the lines of "that's easily fixed for the real thing". Really, it shouldn't have to be. And speaking of those talking heads, their presence was entirely superfluous and the fact that they were merely filling time between acts was far too obvious. Not to mention the same, year-after-year cliches about "the glory years", the obligatory VT of the seven previous winners (last one 16 years ago) and the platitudes of "wouldn't it be great to recapture that spirit", when the level of effort put into this thing demonstrates that RTÉ clearly has no interest in recapturing anything.

I still don't understand why this has been rolled into the Late Late Show. Despite claims to the contrary, a lot of people in Ireland actually still care about the Eurovision. The national song contest is pretty much guaranteed good ratings and giving it its own dedicated studio production, broadcast on a Thursday or Saturday night would I'd imagine be a relatively cheap hour-and-a-half of television, given the relative size of the audience. Times are tough in Ireland, and I'm sure that's having a knock-on effect on RTÉ, but there are ways around it. Product Placement is allowed now, a heavily sponsor-branded show with some half-decent production would be a huge improvement on what we've got.

Maybe it's a sense that there's not too much point in bothering to put much effort into what is essentially a Jedward-rubberstamping event. But I suspect that even without the Jedward-factor, RTÉ just wouldn't have bothered anyway.

The Voice

In fairness that's debatable. But I've got into an argument about placenames over on Metropol before and it never ends well. Regardless, I was just suggesting this as a potential reason why they decided not to go with "The Voice of Britain". Seems quite plausible to me but I may well be wrong.

The Voice

It doesn't. You haven't understood my post. Maybe it wasn't 100% clear.

The name "The Voice of Britain" would seem to exclude Northern Ireland and the name "The Voice of the UK" doesn't really scan well. This, I presume, is why the BBC have decided to go with "The Voice UK".

The Voice

I assume the problem here is that The Voice of Britain would exclude Northern Ireland, and The Voice of The UK doesn't really scan well.

BBC Breakfast

Not that I'd subscribe to the above poster's weirdly sexist views, but the example you've given would kinda make me side with Stayt on this. I mean, what exactly was he supposed to say in response to that? You could argue that it's his job but by simply stating that there's "a lot of stuff up there" she was very much throwing the ball into his court to immediately come up with something witty and clever on the spot, or to come out with some hackneyed cliché like "shocking stuff" or "really makes you think". "Yes" probably seemed like the best option in the circumstances.

Banter has its place, but if it's going to be as inane as "wow, that's a lot of stuff", then I feel it's best just not to bother in the first place. Actually, I'm curious as to how it's managed, is it actually factored into running orders for presenters to have some spontaneous interaction? As in, "talk to each other here"?

Live Reports on News Bulletins

Watching the BBC News at Six tonight, it seems that today is a relatively slow news day, with the attacks on the British Council obviously leading the news, but not requiring extended reports or a great deal of analysis. And yet following the report, apparently someone felt that it was necessary to go live to the reporter in Afghanistan for an update. Sian Williams asked one question and the reporter (whose name I cannot remember) gave an answer that can't have lasted more than 20 seconds.

Obviously, this is fairly run of the mill stuff, and it doesn't look like the live report is going away any time soon. But a day like this makes me wonder whether it might not be best to dispense with all the "now we can go live to *whoever* in *wherever* for the latest. So, *whoever*, what can you tell us?" When there isn't an actual two-way conversation between the newsreader and the reporter it all just seems terribly contrived and embarrassing to watch

Sometimes, when there's something big going on in the US, I have a look at the NBC Nightly News. Their approach seems to be a bit more sensible. They cut straight from the filed report to a live update from the reporter, who will usually hand back to the studio by simply saying the newsreader's name. Personally, I think the live report is usually completely unnecessary, but if it must go on, the American way of handling it is often more appropriate and less contrived.

BBC National News: Presentation

Indeed, but it was a bit over the top at the start of the Six tonight when the camera seemed to be trying to look up Sian Williams's skirt, before panning up a little too fast. Just as I'm writing though, the pan at 6:15 was quite nice.

New Desk on Newsnight?

It already did, which is why Worzel didn't know about it. Generic threads are the bane of TV Forum.

How ITV works

Thanks a mil for the explanation.

And I've just realised the answer was probably also somewhere in that 38-page thread but thanks for saving me the bother.