BBC News Audio Quality

An unfair assumption?

It's been like that for over a week now. I would've thought good quality sound was a fundamental requirement for any major broadcaster. This arrangement may well be temporary but how many hours of broadcasting per day are being output here? From what I can gather, this is affecting the News Channel and BBC One news. Not sure whether or not BBC World News is also impacted.

This is a back-up arrangement. Fine. However, the studio and gallery facilities should be able to provide the basics - a high technical standard of sound and vision. We're hardly talking tiny audiences here.

Whether or not my assumption of a "can't be bothered" attitude is fair, the fact of the matter is the audio quality under the current arrangement is poor. Whatever the problem with the equipment and whatever excuses BBC management come up with to justify the on-air results, basic technical standards are not being met here. This should've been tested and addressed before being used on air.

You seem to be very keen to defend the comments that you've made, but you don't really seem to be taking much notice of the comments being made to help you to understand why things are as they are.

You are making assumptions without any knowledge of the situation or of the technicalities behind it, and then judging that because the problem hasn't been satisfactorily resolved, it is because there's a bunch of engineers at Television Centre who are all very well aware of the problem, but have decided that instead of fixing it, they'll just sit around flicking through magazines and drinking coffee.

It may be that extensive testing was carried out prior to the temporary move, and then a problem was identified on the morning of the first bulletin from N9. It may be that the problem has been identified and a solution found, but that implementing the solution would require taking equipment offline that is currently being used to keep the News Channel on air during the N6 refit. It may even be that a solution has been found that would simply cost an unjustifiable amount of money for an 'emergency' set in use for a couple of weeks - and in the current climate of cost-cutting and savings across all departments, it may just not be practical to spend an enormous amount of money on fixing a problem that (while undesirable) is still only temporary and will have 'disappeared' when programmes return to their normal studios soon.

This is, of course, pure speculation. My point, however, is that I don't know why the problem hasn't been fixed - and neither do you. But to characterise the continued existence of the problem as being the product of indifference and a failure by anyone to give a damn is pretty bloody stupid - and incredibly arrogant - when there's nothing to support that assumption.

My neighbour's home has been without hot water - it's only coming out as 'warm' - for almost three weeks. Is it because my neighbour is a lazy sack of sh!t who can't be bothered to get his arse in gear? No, it's because at the moment, he doesn't have a lot of money as he recently lost his job, and he needs to prioritise his spending. He considers that having a warm shower is good enough for right now, and that his need to eat food and pay bills has to be balanced against his desire to have hot water. Until he gets some more cash, he'll have to make the best of what he's got.

Of course, everyone would love for everything to run perfectly all the time, and in a perfect world in which all things were equal, we would all spend an infinite amount of time and money on making sure that everything is flawless and pure and unendingly pleasing.

But you appear not to be aware that that's not quite how things works in the real world - judging by the immaturity of your comments, I'd guess that you're not yet old enough to be fully independent - and as noggin points out, sometimes you have to go with the 'least worst' solution because it's just not practical or possible to have the best.

To assume that imperfection is - by definition - the product of apathy or wilful disinterest is spectacularly ignorant, especially when you've been given a great deal of context in which to appreciate the possible reasons for the continued short-term existence of that imperfection.

No-one has disputed that the audio quality has been anything but below par; what is objectionable is your arrogance in assuming that it's as it is because nobody gives a toss. You come close to acknowledging that you may be wrong in that assumption, but you then mitigate your wrongness by declaring that they should have tested these systems before they were put into action - when you have no idea if they did, and indeed if they did, you have no idea what the outcome of those tests would have been.

It's all very well to discuss these matters on here - that's what we're all here for, after all - but when more knowledgeable people than yourself, such as noggin, take the time to try to help you to understand the context of what you're shooting your mouth off about, you'd do well to acknowledge that they know their stuff and that you can actually learn something from them instead of sticking to your guns and chanting the same old boIIocks over and over again until someone agrees with you.

YES, the audio quality has been shocking. We get it. Now, try to understand why that may be, and see if you can find it in yourself to accept that maybe, just maybe, it's not because the BBC decided they don't give a fiddler's fùck about their news output any more.

Couldn't of put it better myself.

That's normally my line LOL. For the record, I hadn't noticed the poor sound until I spotted it on here! I had noticed the titles weren't as loud as they normally were. Maybe it's because I know that when they move back to N6 they will have better Barco screens.

I have also noticed the key effects, but it only really shows if they are transitioning to a dark colour (like a black background with a reporter being out at night'.

I have every respect for noggin and his views and opinions; we have spoken privately on a number of occasions. I am well aware that he is considerably more knowledgeable than I about BBC technical infrastructure. I am perfectly capable of interpreting and digesting his comments. He has put forward perfectly reasonable explanations as to the possible cause of the audio corruption and why it has been allowed to continue.

My original remark about no-one at the BBC being bothered was a throwaway comment.

What I am trying to get across here is that as a viewer, I expect the BBC to deliver a service which, at the very least, adheres to basic, fundamental technical standards. Is that unreasonable???? If a fault in a bank IT system results in £2,000 being removed from your bank account, do you want to hear all the bank's excuses as to why it happened. No, you don't. You want the fault fixed and your money back in your account pronto!

You have acknowledged that the audio quality has been pathetic. I'm not aware of any major UK broadcaster allowing a technical flaw such as this to drag on for so long. Clean, error-free audio is a basic requirement of any broadcaster. Full stop - no excuses!

How arrogant of me to have such expectations I know.




Ah, so not knowing anything about me or my background, you'll be making unjustifiable assumptions about me now will you?

For the record, I work in IT and have been directly responsible for a variety of large production systems for a number of years. I certainly wouldn't get away with the sloppiness that the BBC seems to when it comes to contingency arrangements. Thorough testing and respect for customers. That's how things work in the REAL world my friend.

Are they not justifiable? Again, you're persisting in your assumption that they are 'sloppy' for not fixing the problem, despite reasons being given for why that not being the case. Sure, maybe the BBC team can't be bothered to fix the issue. But maybe they can - you're just not making allowances for that.

Whatever!!!

Bye.

Way to have an intelligent debate here people!

For what it's worth, I've been watching the news channel today and haven't noticed any particular sound problems but I did notice last night - particularly on the weather. As has been said it sounded distorted even at low volume. I have heard similar problems and as noggin states, it could be for a number of reasons. Often engineers believe it is one thing, replace it and find that the fault is still there. As the time counts down to moving back it's perfectly conceivable that they have made a conscious decision not to rectify the fault as it's not broadcast critical. By that, I mean being on air and being able to provide a service. If they were that concerned then they would simulcast World to ensure that something was going out.

Yes, it should be fixed and certainly and certainly you would expect the highest quality from any broadcaster - especially the BBC. However, on a channel which is largely made up of speech, I guess a little distortion, while not ideal, is certainly palatable in the scheme of things.

Both Sky News and the BBC had instances where a conversion on the sound rate of the audio on titles and beds resulted in a distorted and grainy sound. That continued for months, and was probably much more easy to rectify that the current problem. Just goes to show that what's important to us, may not always be considered the highest priority. So as long as the product is going out and the content is there - that's where the real importance lies for the people who produce this day in, day out.

Glad I bothered.

So am I.

Actually, heard bits of the late BBC One bulletin on analogue (from a distance) and the audio seemed fine (including the titles). All sorted perhaps?

Don't know what Simon McCoy was up to but he seemed a little breathless at the top of the programme.



It is (or maybe was) mostly the speech that's being corrupted though. The volume is loud and slightly distorted. The overall effect is that of a TV speaker that's knackered - which is what I thought it was originally.

As you say, this is the BBC - and we're talking basic technical requirements.

I disagree. It's not rocket science after almost 75 years of TV broadcasting to transmit undistorted audio and video, particularly by a broadcaster, that keeps telling us, it's 'world class'. I'm afraid the latest episode is indicative of the Beeb's 'that'll do' attitude to technical matters. I suspect it's down to a mixture of poorly skilled, trained, or motivated technical staff, and a general lack of money being spent on engineering.