BBC National News: Presentation

It most certainly is Sophie Raworth.

The CSO set-up used for the afternoon bulletin on BBC ONE looking quite poor. Fuzzy at the top of the screen and backdrop showed up quite around Fiona's hair.

Didn't see this particular bulletin but it does usually look poor. Am I right in thinking the same CSO set is used for the 8 o'clock bulletin too? If so, why does that look much better (albeit not perfect)?

No, I think I remember someone saying the 8 comes from a proper 'green screen' set up (in TC7?) so it looks better because it gets so many people watching. Presume as it does effects, etc, it has a bigger team to produce it (though probably not exactly huge!).

The 8 looks 'orrible, particularly on a Wednesday when it follows Inside Out and often goes out in 14:9 on digital, because it's not worth the region opting back to network to opt back out for the regional headlines a minute later.

Hmm - that only happens in regions with poorly implemented DTT opt-out chains (or set-ups that have been "unofficially" modified). Normally the digital network should be present on DTT/DSat even when the regional centre is opted-out (soft opted) on analogue and the opt-chain armed for DTT/DSat - as it is triggered by "Red Lights" on the network source. When the network source is on the vision mixer, the digital chain should be carrying digital network, and only when the vision mixer cuts away from network is the digital opt (a cut) triggered (via a vision delay and cut delay to match the coding delay)

Leeds certainly put the national bit of the 8 out in soft 14:9 on DSat last night.

The national 8 o'clock bulletin is presented from TC7 and because of decent lighting and space tavailable o put the presenter well away from the cloth, looks as good as CSO can. Since the recent news studio reorganisation project, the daytime summaries, like the Red Button headlines sequences, come from a far from ideal set up known internally I think as N10. It's not a studio, more a computer-based edit suite with a camera in it. As far as I know, it's more or less a single-person operation... One could argue that while the results are ok for the red button and web, they're well below par for transmission on a national channel.

Is it a weather studio this N10? I wonder if one of those might look better.

I think the problem I have with the 8 is that the zoom out is done via DVE rather than moving/zooming a camera, so that opening shot looks very soft/pixellated.

No. AKAIK there are only a couple of weather studios and they are specifically set up to do forecasts from the dedicated weather graphics production system. It would take a fairly major overhaul to make them import news footage, do sound and vision, astons and so-on. They're also nowhere near the news centre and are pretty much fully booked anyway. That said, they would very likely look better!

Explain something to me please?!

We've just got Tiscali TV (a broadband tv service) and I'm watching BBC1. Because our aerial is completely worthless we only get the service down our line, so only get BBC1 London. Yet, while definately watching BBC1 London, we get the sports headlines in place of the BBC London headlines at the start and middle of the program. BBC London is then on as usual at 13:30, and no other problems to report.

This has happened all week now (we only got it last weekend) and I can't understand why Tiscali TV would pick up the BBC News Channel feed rather than London's, when everything else is fine (such as 'This is BBC 1, and now the news with Louise Minchin and Victoria Hollins)


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