itsrobert's posts

Easier to have it pre-recorded, rather than waiting on someone in sound to fire off the cart with the correct presenters intro.
Notice how the zoom down to the desk is cued in the gap between "the one o'clock news from the BBC" and "with Phillip Hayton", and the v/o annouce end hits the riser instrumentation in the outro to the theme tune, perfectly.

Firing that off on cart live (or early hard disk storage, if they had it) each programme to hit those two points with different name lengths, and with the live gallery background noise enviorment, would make it a magic mystery tour every day.

Nothing personal but that right there is exactly the problem with diagnosing the North through a London/South East lense. It's also why we tend to get well-meaning but utterly wrong prescriptions.

Someone who lives in Croydon and someone who lives in Enfield are both Londoners. That's a big thing to have in common. They both go into central London for shopping, entertainment and, more often than not, employment.

Liverpool and Manchester are two of the next largest cities in the country which are fairly close to each other in a UK context but still very distinct. I live in Liverpool, shop in Liverpool and, back when we lived in a somewhat free society, socialised in Liverpool. I very rarely go to Manchester for anything.

And so, like itsrobert, I have to ask what do I have in common with York or Newcastle that I don't with, say, Birmingham, which is closer? Or, indeed, North Wales, which is right on our doorstep.

Ask anyone in Liverpool what could the BBC do to cover them better and no one, I repeat, NO ONE, will say more continuity announcements from Salford. Let's face it, even the Scotland/Wales/NI continuity is at least as much a political wheeze as a practical one.

And again, Liverpool, despite being one of the largest and culturally distinct cities in the country, is not in the national conversation, as per usual. It goes without saying that none of the boondoggles in terms of department relocations will be heading this way but rather to the same two or three favoured cities outside London. I've long come to expect nothing different there but come on: if they were remotely serious, they'd finally take a look at how Liverpool is accommodated for in the local news provision.

BBC North West is the largest region, household-wise in the country, after London. Liverpool people think it's too Manchester-centric, Manchester folk think Liverpool is featured too much and everyone north of Wigan feel they hear too much about both places. If they wanted to do something more like France 3 (comparing Picardy to the whole North of England is a joke) then they'd seriously look at a way of providing sub-opts, at least for Liverpool/Merseyside but perhaps also Lancashire. Similar perhaps should be done for Sheffield/South Yorkshire and I would say Scotland and perhaps Wales also.

Additionally, they should devolve all regional output, giving each region a set budget, removing the "English Regions" layer while they're at it. Then, each region decides its priorities, whether that be providing regional continuity, having two news anchors or commissioning a new look for the news without worrying about being forced to drop it within months by someone in London (or Birmingham) who wants it to look identical to equivalent programmes in other parts of the country.

All that would be truly transformative. Alas, this is no doubt merely a political wheeze. With a year or two, some overqualified fixer will likely come into the corporation to find savings and comes up with the novel idea of not having a separate BBC One for the North. And he/she will be able to retire comfortably due to coming up with such a genius idea.

Please excuse the long post and my cynicism.

If the North is having seperate continuity, maybe they should rename the North West region news as Look North, so they can actually promote it verbally throughout the day

But, speaking as a northerner, I don't think 'the north' is a distinct part of the UK. There isn't really a 'northern' identity - but there are strong identities around Yorkshire, the North East. In the north west, the cities of Manchester and Liverpool seem to dominate.

I think the concept of 'the north'' as a homogeneous bloc only really exists in the minds of London-dwelling politicians and mandarins.

'This is BBC One in the north' is going to mean sod all to a viewer in Scarborough or Newcastle when it's voiced with that London types identify as a 'generic northern' accent, which, no doubt, will be a Manc accent!

Anyone having long loading times with HQ video clips again or is it just me?

So the latest page of posts in the "Piers Morgan to leave GMB" thread should be moved into a new thread called "What GMB did a year ago about social distancing", as they are nothing to do with Piers leaving?
Then there'll be endless GMB threads, as it seems to be one of the most talked about things on the forum.

If I'm honest, this thread is why I believe that some megathreads are OK. I think it would work much better if this and Piers discussion could be in one thread, especially seeing as some other things (e.g. what GMB did a year ago when the lockdown was beginning) are being discussed there.

Oh please do share! (if you can)