BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

The week after I retired I had a bonfire in the garden and burned all my white shirts. I kept two, one for weddings and one for funerals.

Apparently Peter Levy got his foot in the door at Look North following being recommended by Judith Stamper... because she knew he wore a tie on the radio.

That thing about "dress for the job you want" doesn't work in my industry, academia. My colleague and I have adopted an unofficial dress code of shirt and trousers (jeans and a t shirt would be perfectly acceptable to management), which is smarter than many of the academic staff who are on a higher pay grade.

It works well, practical for day to day technical work, without looking overdressed yet presentable enough for the occasions when a VIP is on site that nobody has warned us about. And easily dressed up with a blazer if the occasion demands it.

Look, I really don't think it's fair to criticise presenters' performances like this.
There can be a multitude of reasons why presenters and guest stumble on location - earpiece communications being the main one - it can be howl-round, your own delayed sound coming back at you - autocue or heaven forbid ipad connectivity glitches. You're also outside a controlled environment with members of the public too. Don't forget also a mixture of crews and subtle differences in kit. As for poor judgements that what producers are there for...

I think it's fair to critique the end product - yes the shortcomings may not be the presenter's fault but if it looks unprofessional then that is worthy of (reasoned and measured) comment.

I appreciate that producers and the environment can contribute to the end product, but I still feel like some of the shortcomings related to Derbyshire's approach. She seemed to still be trying to present a programme more akin to her normal show rather than rolling news coverage in the standard BBC News style. At times it was like she'd never watched the news channel - at each TOTH instead of a quick 'This is BBC News, I'm Victoria Derbyshire, the headlines at 10' we got some rambling 'Hello... good morning... I'm Victoria Derbyshire... it's ten o'clock'.

I agree - for instance, when have you ever seen a seasoned news presenter like Alastair Stewart struggle? I watched one of his programmes from the control room and there wasn't even a top story with 30 seconds to go to TX. He literally pulled it together on the fly with all hell going on in his earpiece but you would never have known it onscreen. John Suchet was another one - he apparently knew the content of his bulletins so well that he wouldn't necessarily need the autocue and would be able to 'tell' the viewer the news without reading every word in front of him. Contrast to someone like Trevor McDonald and if the autocue failed, that was that. A competent presenter should be able to cope with pretty much anything in a professional manner; surely that's the job?

I think the issue with Derbyshire is that she's still a radio presenter who works on television. Her delivery is still in the style of painting the picture for the listener when the viewer already has it.

I think the thing is she lacks the experience of anchoring serious breaking news coverage on TV over a long period of time on the ground. There's no better experience than of course doing it live, but it's one of those things you can do or you can't. She's not a TV newsreader or television journalist and had no prior TV news experience before her own show started. On radio it poses its own challenges (I know, I've done it) but it's easier to hide the pandemonium going on in the background than on TV.

To London Lite, yes that's very true. But if you look at the likes of Julian Worricker who is still primarily a radio journalist and started out that way he can adapt his style for television, granted he's been doing TV longer than Victoria Derbyshire, but she seems to struggle with adapting her style for a different medium.

I suspect the reason she's dispatched to anchor on location during breaking news when it's her scheduled slot rather than say Joanna Gosling, Anita McVeigh or Ben Brown instead is probably down to internal politics more than anything.

I've not paid Outside Source much attention until now - and probably won't in future - but who's brilliant idea was it to implement a system where the presenter has to keep turning away from the camera before they've even finished their sentence? If they really can't stretch to employing someone else to work the big telly, then why don't they link it to the flippin' tablet the presenter's holding for no apparent reason?

2018 News programmes contain distracting and pointless presentation gimmicks ?

Geddaway !!

The only good thing about Outside Source is all those BBC News logos you never to get to see otherwise, but i agree its very gimmicky, and i swear the presenter really has no control over the big screen, its a shame they cant simulcast GMT, Impact or Global.

The bigger questions is why cant they complete their sentence when they turn away? Personally Im not bothered by the movement or livelier format at all. But for certain presenters its certainly not suited to their robotic, halting manner of speaking.