BBC News 24

I thought my eyes were playing tricks with me this morning, but how long has MATTHEW PINSENT (four-times Olympic rowing champion) been presenting the sports bulletins on News 24?

(sorry if I've missed this completely!)

EDIT: and yes, upon reading through this thread, I have indeed missed this completely! Sorry!

With the clocks going back tonight, will the channel be called news 25 tomorrow?

Do you think no-one makes that joke every year?

Excellent use of the left-hand summary area tonight - a package presented by Mike Sergeant, with the camera pulled out much wider than usual for the pod on this side of the studio, with Mike on the right of frame, and a superimposed screen on the left containing visuals for his package. Some nice wide aerial shots from the desk area looking across to the left hand side of the set for the handovers too.

This side of the studio was used as the Sportsday table and chairs set remains in place in the right hand area of the set with the projector screen until after 20.00 on a Saturday night.

Also, no surprise to see Tim being brought in to cover for Chris tonight, as he was clearly struggling last night with his voice. Good to see he's still virtually always in the building, given that he did his usual 2 shifts on Friday, one cover shift during the day and then his own shift at night, and will most likely end up doing another 2 shifts tomorrow, his own Sunday morning slot, and Chris' evening shift again.

That's because they've removed the perspex semicircle in front of the pod, which shielded it from the corridor. Therefore it's just the back wall of the pod.

However the autocue is still on a TFT monitor underneath the camera, which always gives the impression of the presenter staring down at the camera

Well, there's a graphics breakdown with the tower frozen during SportsDay.

Every time, after two attempts, to load the Sports ticker the tower froze. They've just removed it and I presume Big Ted's being used.

edit: Just having the black box, under the tower, and without the white ticker bar looked quite nice.

I do like the left hand side pod, I know it can be a distraction for the presenter as they are in effect in the main corridor leading in and out of the studio, but it is a nice view and the camera on this side always seems that bit sharper. Wider views do look nice over there, which we used to see much more of when they still used it for the BOTH summaries; nowadays it's just used for the sports headlines at quater past, and as a 'get-out' presenting space when national bulletins are coming from the desk area, or the desk is full with presenter and several guests, or on a Sunday when Dateline London takes up the desk space.

EDIT: Keep meaning to mention, but there is one director who gets the maximum out of the cameras on every shift they do. She (I think it's a she!) always makes use of the moving aerial camera, does lots of zooming, crabbing, tracking with the ped cams, always gets the most out of the set. Full marks, and she stands out above the others in this respect!

Well Kate Garaway once announced "You're watching BBC News 25" in the very early days...

(But the number of people who remember Kate Garaway presenting on News24 is probably fewer than the number of people in the gallery at the time...)

Some interesting views of the newsroom in an interview on BBC One's news on Identiy Theft.

Not disputing this - but moving cameras for the sake of it isn't that big or that clever... There should be a reason or motivation for every camera move or shot change - otherwise it can be distracting.

And as for the overhead motorised camera - I'm not a fan - you usually hear it continue to whirr annoyingly long after the director has mixed off it - especially with a less than loud presenter.

Indeed, that can be quite annoying. You can quite clearly hear the whirring noise for several seconds once the presenter has begun speaking. BBC News 24 and BBC World are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of camera work. News 24 has imaginitive shots regularly throughout the day whereas World use the same shots hour-to-hour, day-in day-out. I don't really know which I prefer!

Oh yeah, of course I know that camera moves need to be motivated; it's my job! I can't tell you exactly what I do or who I work for, but I work with TV and video cameras most days of the week, and I appreciate good work when I see it, especially when working with remote studio systems, (Rademac) much harder than 'hands on' operating