BBC Election 2015

To me that compounded the problem, when you had Tooting, Battersea and Putney all declared from the same venue in Wandsworth, and the live bug had "LIVE: Wandsworth" on screen throughout. Who cares if they were in Wandsworth? You already had the Wandsworth The Brighter Borough backdrop at the venue. The actual names of the seats were buried in the lower thirds and with the forecast and the clock and the ticker all there, it was probably the least prominent aspect.

One thing you don't seem to get any more, and was also the case in 2010, is lots and lots of reporters, you don't get many squences where they check in at various counts, which you used to. I don't think it's a question of cuts because you still get plenty of OBs and there are reporters there as well - Steph McGovern was mentioned in the press release and according to her Twitter she was at Birkenhead, but I don't think I saw her all night. Every time they went over there, for the Wirral declarations and to interview Esther McVey and Paul Nuttalls Of The UKIPs, they had David or Andrew conducting the interviews.

There was a sequence around 3am where we nipped around the country and heard from Clive Myrie, Samira Ahmed, Anita Anand and Guiles Dilnot in quick succession but that didn't happen very often. I think it's a bit of a shame because it adds a bit of energy to proceedings and one of the fun bits of election night was everyone at the Beeb being out and about and veterans alongside people from Newsround and sport. In 2005 for example you had Lizo Mzimba, Adrian Chiles and Anna Ford as reporters. Who wouldn't want to see Jonathan Pearce or Matt Baker at a declaration?

Vines graphics were ridiculous.

The main point of graphics is to make things clearer and to tell the story, That virtual House of Commons with weird zombies sitting on the benches was just a mess. Peter Snow used to show the whole thing with a blue or red dot which explained it all far more clearly.

Those House of Commons zombies were very, very scary.

And, of course, up until very recently the Beeb didn't have anyone filling the role of news anchor because the newsreaders did simply that, read the news. News and current affairs were distinct departments, physically separate (news was at TV Centre and current affairs at Lime Grove), did different things and were often rivals. There was a famous example of when The World At One introduced the programme with their headlines, and then went into the news bulletin where their top story totally contradicted The World At One's headline (I think WATO had said a strike was continuing and the news said it had ended) because news had the exclusive and wanted to break it first, and so didn't tell current affairs.

David was always engaged by the current affairs department and so did programmes for them. His spell at Nationwide was a total disaster, mind, he left after three months but it wasn't entirely his fault, it accompanied a rather abrupt shift in the tone of the programme to make it more serious and it was too jarring a change for viewers. Also as well, while David now is charismatic and engaging, in the eighties he often came across as a bit cold and pompous.

Actually talking about the split in news and current affairs reminds me of this weekend's VE Day coverage, where because David and Huw have been a bit busy we have some less familiar faces and voices on the coverage like Eddie Butler and Kirsty Young. It reminds me that twenty years ago, when they were doing the fiftieth anniversary commemorations, in those days the coverage was produced by the events department, again an autonomous department, and the Head of Events didn't like any of the news and current affairs people, so you didn't have David Dimbleby or anyone, you had John Tusa presenting and people like Raymond Baxter, Eric Robson and Julian Tutt commentating. It was the same with the Hong Kong Handover.

But I remember Private Eye saying that all the news people had to be there as well, to cover it for the news, so in most cases you had twice as many people as required. Nowadays it's all one BBC of course and they all work together.

I have to agree with others that it's a good thing that David Dimbleby is handing over the reins to Huw Edwards. He seemed out of his depth on several occasions during the evening.

On a separate but related point, does anyone know whether Dimbleby still does that thing at the end of Question Time where he starts to read out the contact details for the programme should people want to apply to be in the audience, only to trail off when he gets to the email address / Facebook / Twitter account details? I haven't seen Question Time for some time now but I remember the audiences would gently humour Dimbleby and you would often hear laughter at that point, given how disconnected he seems from the world of social media.

Even worse were the virtual effigies of the party leaders. That blinked.


Blinked.

2020 ....

Retain Emily Maitlis on Stats she was on her game throughout let her do the Vine stuff too,
Main Presenters 2200-0600 - Huw Edwards / Jane Hill,
Day Presenters - Laura Kuenssberg / Andrew Marr.
Interviews - Andrew Neil and Jeremy Vine.
Roaming Interviews - Jon Sopel (aftermath conferences etc)

Please no Victoria Derbyshire anywhere.

Not really sure where to put these, and apologies if they have already been posted. This was BBC Alba's coverage of the election (started at 1800 on 8th May).





They seem to have kept the same desk which they used from their referendum coverage, which may have been the same one Huw and Network used.

The fact that the NBH newsroom looked empty as it was the middle of the night and everyone was working on the election either in Elstree or at a count didn't help.

Just seemed odd, "let's leave the excitement of the election studio to cross over to the normal newsroom miles away to get someone to round up what we've already told you here"

Should have done the news upstairs in the election studio.

The lower thirds should have been bespoke.

The studio itself was ok, better than I expected, it looks like it was just the Ten o'clock news graphics that were too overbearing, the backdrop used on the night was much easier on the eye.

There was a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff from BBC Elstree in an Election Night: Behind the Scenes report from the Sunday Politics.

Presented by the excellent Adam Fleming.

I agree it takes away part of the 'fun', but I think partly because so much intelligence was coming in from journalists from all organisations on social media, there's slightly less of a need to cross all over the place to listen find out any rumours as they have already been raised.


I think the fact the unfolding picture was so different from what was anticipated this time round meant a lot of studio analysis was warranted, as it tried to explain what was going on.

As far as I could tell there was no closing titles containing the names of all the production staff this time. This used to be one of the highlights of the BBC coverage.