BBC News Channel: Presentation

Wow, time does fly. Sadly, I didn't really see News 24 in its early days. It was only on cable then and we didn't get Sky Digital until autumn 2000. So I've seen 12 of its 15 years. Even since then it's changed quite a bit - more in tone than anything else. The structure of each hour has changed very little overall. But I bet it was quite a bit different again in 1997. I only saw it fleetingly during the 97-00 period when I visited a mate's house. His family had cable and I was so jealous that he got all the flags presentation and I didn't!!

By the way, great to see you're still here David. There aren't many of us left from 2001.

I only really saw News 24 on BBC One overnight or early Saturday mornings (it used to run until 06:45 or 07:00 sometimes at weekends) and by 1998 'Weekend 24' got introduced on BBC Two from 08:00 to 09:00. David Robertson & Tanya Beckett were pretty much the regular presenters on a Sat morning, Louise Minchin popped up from time to time and I think Chris Eakin too. Jane Hill did appear occasionally but she was a regular overnight presenter back then. To me News 24 really came on when it moved into N8 in October 1998? It changed the whole feel of the channel (mainly because it lost the very brightly colored walls of N9).

It's great to still be here Rob, Don't get as much time as I used to but I do still visit fairly regularly. Good to see you're still here too!

Something very odd going on. We appear to be still getting World News graphics over the ten. Katty Kay has just been astoned, as has Babita Sharma. These inerestingly didn't appear on BBC One.

Think it's been sorted now, "Pictures from YouTube" was on the screen for quite a while before the expected astons started appearing.

Noticed something similar last night as well. During the weather forecast the headline straps came on screen. This was shortly before the NC handed over to BBC World News for the 2130 back half hour where we had a simulcast of the PBS edition of World News America to cover hurricane Sandy, and low and behold those exact same straps were used to open the program.
Odd, I always thought that the astons and straps were all done in the gallery in Washington because I remember back in the News 24 days that those headline straps never aligned perfectly with the ticker.

I've never seen the BBC's Washington set-up, but I was always under the impression that all graphics, titles, music etc is played in by London. That's certainly the way it was done when I visited BBC World in 2003; I watched the 11pm and midnight Mishal/Adrian co-pres bulletins from Washington and London from N9 and all that sort of stuff was being controlled from there. Also, I visited CNN's London studios in 2006 and they only had a very small control room, essentially just to oversee local cameras and lighting etc. All the graphics and music was played in by Atlanta. So, I'd assume the same applies to the BBC.

The reason for the graphics not lining up is because it was coming from N9. For some reason (I never really grasped why) but whenever World produced a simulcast from N9 the graphics were always a few pixels out on News 24. That quirk dates right back as far as I can remember and I remember it being a way of us TV Forumers being able to tell which gallery was controlling a simulcast in the days before lots of BBC insiders were here and Twitter existed etc.

I think someone said that to solve the problem of the graphics dropping a few lines would require the installation of a fibre line between the two galleries and that it wasn't deemed worth it as generally its not something people would notice. I'm going back a few years mind since I saw it mentioned so i might not be getting my facts completely correct.

I hope the NC and WN get a voiceover for their bullitens, like the voice at the end of the World countdown, something like "This is *programme name* from BBC News, with *name* (Live from studio *letter* at New Broadcasting House) " and when a national bulliten is on, replace the preceding ident with the end of the countdown with the voiceover.

Something similar to that actually happened on BBC World in the mid-2000s. I swear for a period a female voice used to say "Putting news first, this is BBC World" during the last few seconds of the countdown each hour.

But for the most part, the BBC have only ever flirted with voiceovers. ITN was always more keen to use them. News 24 has never had them; the 1, 6 and 9 bulletins had them during the late 80s/early 90s but never since 1993. BBC World did actually use some voiceovers in the mid-90s on programmes like The World Today, but it was fairly short-lived. I'd be very surprised if they started using them again, although I suppose it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Okay. Well I certainly don't. Never have liked voice-overs. They're pretty pointless and just prove difficult when a stand-in presenter comes in. And "Live from Studio E"? Really? Wrong side of the Atlantic for that kind of thing...

I think it depends on the voiceover artist used as to how effective they are. For instance, the ITN voiceovers used in the 80s and 90s were quite effective because they were recorded by people with authoritative voices and initially were only used sparingly. I don't think the current ITV News artist (James Faulkner) is terribly good.

However, I do agree that it becomes problematic when either a new or temporary presenter joins and/or an unusual pairing of presenters crops up. If it's planned in advance then the voiceover artist could be brought in to record some new ones; but nine times out of ten it ends up with either using a generic voiceover or having the sound mixer quickly chop up existing ones - which invariably sounds wrong due to changes in inflection and intonation. It's always preferable to avoid chopping them up - and this is partly why I think the ITN ones worked well in the 80s and 90s, precisely because they seem to be one-take recordings.

I noticed this morning that Simon McCoy was sitting in a different chair to usual - a blue one, as opposed to grey (Ben Brown is in the same chair now). However the chair on the right is still the standard grey one.