Earlier this week I attended an event organised by the Media Society "Who Won The Tv Election?" where two separate panels discussed the coverage of the General Election, specifically the night itself.
There were two panels.
The first panel was "The view from the sofa" and comprised Peter Snow (yes that Peter Snow!), John Mair (former Election Hub Producer, BBC), Sue Cameron (Daily Telegraph) and Alexandra Henderson (former BBC General Election results editor).
The second panel was "The view from the Bridge" comprising Alex Chandler (General Election Editor, ITV News), John McAndrew (Executive Editor, Sky News), Ian Rumsey (Executive Producer, ITN Productions/Channel Four) and Sam Woodhouse (General Election Results Editor, BBC). The debate was chaired by Stewart Pervis.
Everything discussed was on the record and the Chatham House rule wasn't in force so here's a summary of the main points. Some of which are already touched on in this thread. These notes are from memory, so apologies for any errors or major omissions!
Amongst the representatives from the broadcasters, there was a clear professional respect for each other which I think was genuine and not simply out of politeness (I guess in part due to knowing first hand the pressures of live television), namely each broadcaster does what is expected of them from the BBC doing an event of scale with a double height set and lots of analysis, Sky offering a fast and accurate results service and Channel 4 doing something alternative.
The Broadcasters receive the exit poll results at 9.30pm. At the BBC, only David Dimbleby and one other were told the results by Sam Woodhouse. Sky didn't tell Adam Boulton the results before they were aired.
As far as calling results is concerned, as we know the BBC wait until the returning officer has called as this is when the election result is legal. ITV use a variety of means from stringers on site talking to parties, watching the counting of ballot papers, but did defend their approach citing clear editorial guidelines. ITV did used to pay bonuses to stringers who got the results first, but no longer do so.
Much of the comments reflect what was discussed on this forum: The BBC went overboard with having all of Jeremy Vine, Sophie Raworth and Emily Maitlis. Lots of praise for Andrew Marr and Laura Kuenssberg.
There was also a lot of praise for Andrew Neil with many commenting he should be given a more prominent role. The expectation of many was this would not be David Dimbleby's last election. Dimbelby was praised for his humanity when interviewing MPs who'd lost their seats.
The BBC's representative did acknowledge they had major technical problems between 3 and 4 am but felt if the best MailOnline could get on the BBC was the sight of a tea lady on set at 4am, they'd done well as far as press criticism is concerned.
Peter Snow really hammered home the importance of getting the voting swing on screen quickly and the BBC didn't do this, citing the Nuneaton result (a Conservative Hold, but with a 4% swing towards the Conservatives). The general consensus was that Sky did much better in the graphics department.
Channel 4's coverage did come in for criticism, particularly the obvious unease of Jeremy Paxman. However, Channel 4's coverage was vociforsouly defened by Ian Rumsey who did note the difficulty in doing live comedy and its audience performance amongst the 16-34 age group and against ITV.
There was some questioning of ITV as to whether they should even continue with General Election coverage, given the relatively low ratings and the lack of scale of the coverage to the BBC. Representatives from ITN/ITV on the panel and on the floor said this was never on the agenda and there would be no question about ITV as a PSB not continuing with Election Night coverage.
Interestingly, the only one to mention the Sky Arts coverage was John McAndrew of Sky toward the end of the debate. Also, no-one mentioned the BBC actually had four separate election night programmes across the nations.
Last edited by Omnipresent on 25 May 2015 12:05pm