Yesterdays 5.35 bulletin should have been so easy fr them. Extend a report into either the Northern Rock or Kosovo story and then run late into the weather (which wouldn't have surprised anyone with the news stories developing yesterday) They could then have either run a long weather forecast, or run a number of trailers afterwards leading straight into the bulletin.
You would think so wouldn't you! The bulletin even started late - 17:38 - and BBC One were coming out of a recorded programme (of pre-determined length) so N24 should've known well-beforehand exactly what time it would be starting.
The idea of extending the previous hour/half hour does sound much better than the current setup. At the moment, reports are being cut off mid way through with no explanation leading to a messy link. Surely, as people have said, have a few trails or the spinning globe animation in between N24 and the simulcast as it will make the link less messy and would at least avoid cutting off mid way through. The previous half hour's content could be adjusted accordingly to suit for example yesterday's 1735 bulletin could have had a late weather and then trails as opposed to just cutting out. The fact that there was still a messy link even when N24 should have known exactly what time it was going out as a simulcast makes it more disappointing.
It's possible that BBC One decided to drop a trail resulting in them going to News 24 30 seconds early. It sounds like a lack of communication which caused them to have no choice but crash out of a report, something I doubt they would have wanted to do at all, let alone planned to.
Well whatever the cause was it needs improving. Another option would have been for a 5-7 minute sports round up presented from the pod heading direct to the news summary. Maybe opening at half post with "a news summary follows shortly but first a round up of this afternoons sporting action."
Otherwise go to weather, and just ask weather to come out at the requested time. Aren't weather presenters usually quite used to broadcasts being extended or shortened at short notice
Bit that got me is that they did go to the weather late - about 32 rather than 27 - and it would have worked had BBC1 been on time at 35 - but it still didn't.
Mind whether going to the weather late was planned, or a product of all the breaking news is anyone's guess.
It sounds like they did try to do what people are suggesting here, and extend the top half of the hour, so they could go straight into the simulcast, but because of delays on BBC1 this didn't work. I would then say Red Bee were making changes to the schedules to try and get BBC1 back on time, and forgot to tell the N24 gallery they would be coming to them early (or the change was made too late, or misunderstood).
Problems and mistakes happen, this appears to have been quite a big one. The more I hear, the less I think it was intentional.
I don't know why they are continuing to have 1 camera manned during the '1' - the peds just aren't upto doing any bigger sweeps - they should just continue to operate remotely. Not sure what system they use, probably Radamaec - but in N8 you can get much nicer ped ups/downs and creeping zooms, that are much more controlled and solid, than having an operated camera.
I'm sure that the camera op could easily be re-deployed to operate the cameras remotely, and so put pressure off the vision mixer/director in that way.