BBC News: Nations & Regions

Having lived in Glossop for 5 years and having the luck of North West Tonight in the lounge and Look North in the bedroom plus now having Spotlight back here in Plymouth i have several comments.

North West titles were supurb from the makeover last year. Here was a look to the old regional titles with the town/cities across the bottom- stating the fact- LOCAL NEWS. And now- well I can't help but think here's a chance missed. Don't like the new titles.

Look North. Why oh why (bar the floods of recent years) has Catcliffe got its name on the new Look North Leeds titles? Catcliffe is part of Rotherham- it's like Plymstock appearing Spotlight titles or Dinting on North West Tonight- does Sheffield or Rotherham appear by chance?

Spotlight- came through ok in my view. At least the lighthouse did survive- god bless Smeatons Tower!

OK time to ignore my views on the 3 regions I've lived/viewed/worked in! But why Catcliffe on Look North Leeds!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's funny, I always thought you lived in Lossop, Philg.

I'd completly disagree on that - the new titles look very cheap IMO. The old (new) NWT ones were much more appropriate.




Strange they spend a fortune making everything look the same and then use the BBC Sport graphics for news. Never really understood why they've done that - be much better to have a "news" version, and then if necessary incorporate the BBC Sport logo somewhere.

... totally incorrectly. Gill Sans is not supposed to appear on any of the Sport GFX at all. And unless that screengrab is somewhat cropped, they've also omitted the Yellow BBC Sport logo too which is supposed to be at the bottom.

I'm not sure the scrolling North West Tonight banner is strictly kosher either...

It was made pretty clear that this whole exercise was all about 'the brand' (or brands, as it's encompassing the News and Sport brands) and that 'the brand' shouldn't ever be deviated from!

well . . . . while we're on North West Tonight...

The straps don't wipe on and off like News Channel and 1 6 10. They just fade on and off.

And on the straps on Breakfast inserts this morning it was all lower case. (apart from capitals for first letter of names)

And the scrolling NWT across the bottom of the big boards only looks good on the twin presenter shot of the desk and looks crap when you get two opposite ends of two screens when just close up on one presenter.

Lots of regions can't wipe the astons on and off like Network can. Don;t know if any do actually! It's all to do with the fact that Network have VIZrT but a lot of regions are stuck with older, less capable kit ...

As has been said, some of them are still using old Aston Greens, which are only capable of doing basic fades and dissolves. I think VizRT is being rolled out over some regions, although some are just getting new (albeit more powerful) Aston machines.

Aston Green isn't exactly old, in fact I think you can still buy them. There's plenty of older kit out there in region land (Aston Motif, Motto etc)

An aston itself is capable of wiping an aston onto screen, but only with a basic preset pattern (left to right, top to bottom etc). In order for the caption to wipe onto screen in the way network's captions do and then for the text to 'zip' on, you need a more powerful graphics engine like Viz.

Well looks like it was just that one as the one just used in the late update had it all correctly done:
http://www.thisisfive.co.uk/presbits/nwt2008/25.jpg
Oh, and here's the weather graphic:
http://www.thisisfive.co.uk/presbits/nwt2008/26.jpg

Which I'm incredibly disappointed about, as the original was a better tune.

I notice the headlines were done sitting tonight, as the first report was presented from the screen.

I also noticed some of the astons animated on and off (Presenter aston, and website one) and the rest faded on and off.

One thing still bugging me is when the Live/Locator aston is on screen, the locator vanishes when a name aston appears - looks stupid.

Here in NE&C, we had something like this:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh24/justjoshhh/north.png
(Poorly made mock, please excuse it )

Obviously a problem with Sky's EPG tonight, as this clearly wasn't 'BBC London News'.

http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/grabbed_frame_1.jpg