BBC News Channel: Presentation

Pointless.

The ticker can perform a perfectly adequate job of delivering the latest breaking news while they break away to cover other stories for a few minutes, and if news immediately breaks in the middle of coverage of another story, the main BREAKING NEWS super is usually used to draw attention to this anyway, and if the news carries sufficient immediacy (e.g. cutting to a live event), it is already common practice to break away from a report or down-the-line to cover the live event.

This split screen with split graphics implies that viewers are literally unable to go without seeing pictures of destruction in Japan for a few minutes while other stories are covered. I credit the majority of viewers with enough patience to be able to wait a couple of minutes in the knowledge that an important story will be returned to shortly, even if it's not being covered with pictures at the precise second that they switch the news on.

There is already a split-screen capability that is sparingly used to cover two concurrent events; this is most commonly seen where a live press conference is coming up on one side of the screen, while an interview continues on the other; or where an interviewee is shown on one side of the screen while live or archive footage is shown on the other.

The existence and occasional use of this capability, combined with the main supers and ticker, seem to cover all the bases more than adequately, without reducing video to thumbnail sizes on screen, or having 70% of the screen taken up by graphics.

Isn't the biggest problem with this approach that you can only have sound for one of the two stories at a time? The split screen works effectively (and is used) on stories that are picture led, but where there is nothing additional to add with sound (say waiting for an event to start) - but just running pictures without contextual sound, doesn't really work does it?

The reason I suggested it is that people will turn over if they turn on a news channel to see coverage of a story and the channel is covering another story.

By having pictures from Japan, with text information in the strap below of the main headlines, it tells us that, yes they're across the story, are just covering something else at the moment, but will be back.

Perhaps this would be simpler...

But surely they're changing the channel because they don't want to wait, not because they believe they are not covering a major, major story? Thus, a graphic won't affect people's behaviour.

Yep. Seeing that graphic would actually trigger me to surf to a channel covering the earthquake, rather than staying and waiting IF I was interested in the earthquake.

Slightly wider question.

Who here actually reads the tickers that often?

Very rarely - usually only when there's some breaking news that I've missed the start of and want to catch-up. I never read the normal ticker.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and realised it was very rarely, certainly less often than I used to. I would probably read it more if it was used as I think it should be - normal (grey) when the channel is reporting on the breaking news, breaking news (red) when other news is looked at.

Exactly. It's not used appropriately. Often at times of "Breaking News", you have a strap that reads the same information the ticker reads. I say Breaking News, but half the time it isn't breaking. The BBC have fallen into the trap of Sky - having the ticker red more of the time than it is grey. I don't think I've ever switched to Sky to find a black ticker.

The only time I would read it if there was a story on that didn't really interest me

Turn over now. It's black.

I am utterly stunned at how beautiful it is.

Ant and Dec are doing the weather at 5.55 apparently.