BBC News 24

I never said Peter would be leaving BBC World. I expect to see him quite a bit on the channel in the future.
It was his contract with News24 which has not been renewed. Their loss, he is an excellent presenter.

...although, one assumes, that does not preclude the possibility of him appearing on N24 in the coming months on a freelance basis.

..............

Addendum :: A few issues with graphics on The World Today this morning - among other minor hiccups, the headlines graphic appeared with "STORY" in the headline bar, and "Info" in the large-text description area. Also - and bear in mind that I did have a bucket of wine last night, and it is currently 0517 as I write this - I could have sworn that just before the break, I got a brief glimpse, out of the corner of my eye as I turned towards the screen, of a large lower-screen graphic, partially obscured by the Tower, with the words "NEWS TWINKLE" on it.

And yes, I can't believe I just wrote that as a serious contribution either.

.............

During WBR, the supers kept animating on and off between each change of headline or info line. And indeed, more anomalies have popped up. During the NYC report, the info line featured text with Each Word In Mixed Case, where it was inappropriate - something along the lines of "US Employment Data Due".

During the Frankfurt link-up, at one point the headline read "SOCCER SCANDAL", while the info line said nothing more than "Match rigging" for the full duration of the commentary on that story. Not especially helpful.

And during the world business press snapshots, the news clippings were shown on one of the studio screens with Jamie in shot (rather than using a full screen graphic as they previously did) - and very nice it was too. Or rather it would have been had the paper clippings in vision actually matched the commentary that Jamie was reading out.

A mess.

..........

At around 0652 on Breakfast on N24, it appeared to be snowing in the studio, along with a persistent audio "thudding". It continued into BBC London News, and then suddenly stopped at 0657 - at the exact moment that an animated N24 Tower appeared. It appeared to be a variation of the standard Tower though, with a BBC logo that seemed about 50% larger than normal.

It's not been the most successful few hours for N24 - it's just as well I was the only person watching.

Oh my god.

What's happened to N24? I approve of the whiteticker and black ticker-mast, but that's where my appreciation of these new changes ends.

Why has the font used for the large headlines and for the HEADLINES / IN BRIEF / SPORT / BUSINESS text on the summary supers suddenly become a thinner weight?

Why is the BBC logo now larger? Because they haven't shifted the "NEWS 24" text down, it now looks unbalanced.

Why have these changes been made, but a fundamental glitch like the bottom of the LIVE bug not lining up properly with the top of the split-screens is allowed to remain?

And given that the ticker-mast is now black, why is that when the mast spins around, the chunks appear to have baby-blue highlights in the style of the previous mast?


I have to admit that all of the text looks a lot sharper, but this seems to be a bit of a missed opportunity. There was nothing at all wrong with the heavy weight of the font used for the headlines - now, the juxtaposition of large size and thin font simply don't work together. I'd hoped, since 2003, that the BBC had learnt the lessons of the past in not constantly tweaking with a successful mix - which is how we ended up with the utter dogs dinner of the last graphics set of the 1999-2003 era.

Thumbs up to the new ticker and mast (with the exception of the blue highlights on the rotation); many, many thumbs down to the other changes made.

Glad I'm not going mad! I was wondering how long it had been there and I hadn't noticed!

I like the black on white, can now read the ticker from my sofa! The "Coming Up" banner has a ticker saying "www.bbc.co.uk" scrolling under it too.

You've noticed the changes then

Can we expect any more? Can we possibly hope that some of the less successful changes might revert to their former selves?

It would have been nice to see resolutions of graphics issues like the alignment of the LIVE bug with the split screens and the rather unusual three-line non-headlined supers with the black top bar, at the same time as tweaking other bits and pieces.

If nothing else I'd be happy to see the chunky font back on the headline bar. Oh, and new titles too, if it's not too much to ask. The ticker was a nice surprise though - you can pat the appropriate people on the back for that.

Oh christ- I thought they were having technical problems when I tuned in this morning.

The new font is hideous. The new ticker: hideous. The enlarged "BBC" on the tower... not great.

And the other sides of the ticker label are still blue.

The new ticker looks good - much easier to read than before.

But I have absolutely nothing nice to say about the rest of the graphics changes. I really don't like the thinner headline font - reminds me of the badly mocked-up News 24 Graphics that you sometimes see on sitcoms.

The big fat font was great - bring it back!

Please can we have some captures?

EDIT: Well while we wait for the captures, and based on the information so far, I'll say this: The Guardian recently had a bit of a make-over, and one big change was the new font. It's a lot finer than their previous 'blocky' font, and initially I thought it lacked impact. Now however, I've grown to love it. It really does stand out as it's clear and neat. Less is more, as they say. Perhaps the reason people aren't liking the new News 24 font is because they're 'used to' the old one, and it looks strange. Same goes for the larger BBC (I've always thought they should make that bigger as it used to be hardly visible).

I presume these new graphics will be introduced across all BBC One news as well now so it all fits together?

In quite like the new ticker, it will be better if the baby blue hints that still creep through during the animation were replaced by red. It would also be nice to see the BBC Sport logo put back onto the ticker for sport stories.

Not sure about the Tower and Aston changes, takes some getting used to...

I'm shocked and appalled at the BBC's decision to take Peter Dobbie off News 24, he's such an excellent and efficient presenter, and he will be sorely missed. Nothing against Ben Brown, he's a nice chap, but much more at home out in the field somewhere. There seems to be too much emphasis on being A Name or A Face on the channel at the moment - what about being talented and good at your job? Does this have no relevance?

Incidentally, Simon & Carrie in fits of laughter have just given up talking about a story about Pandas and have thrown to the weather, unable to speak through laughter

I believe 'corpsing' would be an appropriate word to describe it. I think Simon got as far as 'Aww, look at the pandas!' before he collapsed into giggles.

I'm not particularly liking the new slugs. But could the change perhaps be to differentiate themselves from Sky News?

Moz - if youve got Broadband go to the BBC News Player, then to UK and then Man Arrested over House Fire to see a little clip. No ticker though im afraid!