BBC News Thread

You forgot about the couple simulating sex behind him at the start of his piece to camera.
All very bizzarre... and it's not often you hear the word f**k on the 1 o clock news!

And to follow it with the disasterous opening on the six o clock news.... not a good day for them

I really wouldn't be surprised if Alastair's doing most of his reporting with a MiniDV camera, a laptop and a satellite phone. I defintely got the impression he filmed his pieces to camera himself. It's a pretty neat solution, given the circumstances - and I'd imagine they're hiring out a sat truck (and crew) for just a few hours at a time.


itsrobert: when you say 'new technology', do you mean editing on a computer and compressing the video a bit? I'm not quite sure why it's seen as so revolutionary when applied to tv news, people have been doing it for years

Surely newspapers do it with still pictures, not moving ones?

Sorry, maybe it's just because I've had a long day, but I don't quite follow you.

You are right, newspapers have been sending still photos down phone lines to their newsroom for years . But it is a lot more complex to send back video (i.e. moving pictures) ..... that's why it is an innovation

It's not really, though. MPEG has been around since 1988, QuickTime has existed since the early 90's. I'd hazard a guess that the kind of compression they're using at the moment - which certainly doesn't produce what I'd call 'broadcast quality' video - has been around for quite a few years. The only real breakthrough in the last few years is the advances in satellite telephony, and the availability of bandwidth to send the report down the line to London in a reasonable amount of time.

Does anyone know if these one-man reporting teams are being introduced by the BBC and if it will be similar to the video journalists on CNN for example? As for Alastair Leithead, he seems to have taken on the mantle of a roving reporter in the southern USA following his previous posting as a correspondent in Johannesburg. Can anyone at the Beeb confirm what his current role is?

I think he's a stringer in Miami. He's being called a World Affairs Correspondent on screen, which sounds a hell of a lot better than David Willis's normal "California Correspondent" tag.

Thanks

That's a big enough breakthrough to make it previously unfeasable.

There is also the issue of having a computer that is fast enough to be able to encode the video which is also small enough to carry to a disaster zone... anyone with a good enough PC could have done it in 1988 I'm sure, but could it have been done in the middle of nowhere?

Well.. perhaps not new technlology, but certainly better technology.

Alistair Leithhead is 'North America Correspondent'