BBC News Rebrand - This Monday

"Overpriced media fairies"? "Tarquin and Ameila"?

Honestly Jamez, you're so bitter about not getting a job at the BBC.

You're talking rubbish.

There are no Latin verses on the BBC crest. It actually says "Nation Shalt Speak Peace Unto Nation" - which, I believe is English.

And what is it I hear on Sky News today? Oh, a big orchestral fanfare...! ABC News have an orchestral fanfare and what about the NBC News theme? That's an epic piece of music composed by John Williams.

I've read the rest of your post, and it reads just like a BBC press release. However, I've spent the last 20 minutes looking through your mocks in the Mock Forum and it seems you are also incapable of generating anything new and fresh. None of your design work is original or imaginative - you've simply copied what's already been done and fiddled with it. Any idiot can copy someone elses work!

Why can't you actually DESIGN something instead of messing around with an existing concept? I mean what you've done is good, but none of your work shows any kind of independent creativity. One of the first things they say to you at design school is "think outside the box". I admit, it's a stupid management buzzword, but the raw meaning behind it is to generate concepts and ideas that are unique.

It would be good to see you actually design something different rather than the same old Sky News astons and rigidly remaining loyal to another designers work.

If I hired you to rebrand a news channel - let's say Sky - and you came back to me after 10 weeks with the stuff you post online, I wouldn't pay you. Simple as that!

Depends what options you buy (both hardware and software). VizRT isn't a single product - you buy the bits you need.

No need to have live video inputs on a box that just sits there doing a ticker after all...

Not sure where RedBee come into this. They are - like Lambie Nairn - effectively an outside design agency that bits of the BBC may, or may not, commission to provide branding, graphic design and creative input and services.

RedBee have been responsible for the News 24 Countdowns in recent years - and obviously a different bit of RedBee plays out BBC World, and a different bit again makes trails. However RedBee have no current role, AFAIK, in the on-screen branding - in graphic or set terms - of BBC News.

The current studio sets were Simon Jago designs, and the forthcoming rebrand is being directed by Lambie Nairn, no doubt with implementation input from in-house departments within News.

Previous rebrands have been led by in-house teams - again nothing to do with Red Bee.



Except it wasn't.

All the market research - including talking to lots of "real people" - came back with one very loud, clear message. It was cold, it was distancing, it was pompous and it was very inaccessible.



Except that there wasn't such a great influx - many of the current team of designers, and until recently directors, were in the "cut glass blue" era.



But that was a different age. The 24 hour news landscape now leads the agenda - and the pace of innovation in both technology and presentation (not graphics and sets - but actually "presenting" the news - telling the story, updating the audience etc.) has increased.

15 years ago people watched the BBC or ITV News bulletins for their news - now they watch Sky, News 24, CNN etc. as well. As these outlets innovate and change - so to a degree do the network bulletins.

If you watch a 1994 Six O'Clock News with an eye used to watching News today - you'd be amazed how slow, formulaic and old-fashioned they appear.



Except that VR is still fake, and even when implemented well, almost universally appears as false, flat and usually looks cheap.

It has some very good uses - and it solves many expensive problems.



Nothing wrong with drinking Fairtrade coffee... If I'm going to be drinking coffee I'd rather not do it at the expense of others.

As for "inclusiveness", "warm" and "accessible" - anyone who ignores these words can say goodbye to their audience in the current climate. They certainly don't preclude inspiring, original and clever solutions.

You'd be amazed at the level of data that broadcasters now have available to them to analyse their audiences and compare it to their content.

Some of the most successful shows on TV have an incredibly tight focus on their audience - and it shows on-screen (and in the ratings).



Committees are one things. Teams are another.

Sky News only plays an 'orchestral fanfare' for all of one minute for every hour, every other piece of music from the 2005 launch has since been either ditched or doctored with techno beeps whooshs and other sound effects.

You are only complicating it for yourself by bringing the US into this - so don't, they are a completely different market, with different tastes and styles.

I have watched programmes from this era and found them to be refreshing, clear and intelligent.

You talk about formulaic - the formula was to read the news. Headlines, story 1, story 2, story 3, etc, recap, story 4, story 5 etc, headlines end. Today news is still very formulaic, but the formula includes false elements such as special reports (when there's very rarely anything special about them), talking to reporters standing outside a house where something happened etc.

The problem with focus groups is that they listen to what people want. People get what they want far too often, when they should be given what they need instead.

Back then news had authority. Now it's like listening to gossip from a neighbour.


It makes me nauseous reading those words.

Providing news is a duty, not something channels should do to get audiences.

But surely if it is their duty, then they should do it to cater to their audience's needs and wants (another of their duties)?

Putting on my pedant's hat, the existing BBC News theme is in fact orchestral, but only uses a synthesised orchestra for the backing drones.

Needs and wants are quite different!

But that difference is somewhat irrelevant, as it is the broadcaster's duty to cater for both the needs and wants of the audience. The vast majority of the population doesn't want a balding man sitting behind a grey desk, telling you about what happened in the House of Lords today: they want relevant, international news delivered in an informative, intelligent way.

Whilst, sadly, the Ten O'Clock News is moving away from this ideal and starting to sound more like the Di-ly Obsess , programmes such as Newsnight , News at Ten , Channel 4 News and (to some extent) the Six O'Clock News fulfil the audience's needs and wants very well.

How then, do you justify spending millions of pounds on a (hypothetical) newsgathering organisation, which is watched by 100 people, but is telling those people what they need to know, rather than what they want to know?

And who would those 100 people be? I certainly wouldn't watch news programmes which decide the news agenda for me. While I don't care for the sport and celebrity tat which fills up the news these days, some people do want to hear about it. Likewise, when big technology / media / arts stories come up, I want them to get aired.

If we do go to your idealised version of News where the public obeyingly sit in front of the TV and are fed what someone somewhere believes they need to know, who decides the agenda? The producer of that programme? The editors? The channel controller? The government? You?

Ratings are a good measure of how well news broadcasts are meeting their requirements. They exist to educate the maximum amount of people possible as to what is going on in the world. If nobody watches them, they're not doing what they need to.

That's the entire point. The people who decide what should be in the news are the people who are paid to decide, who've been appointed to that role because they've demonstrated that they know what they're talking about. The editors.

In most other fields you wouldn't allow the general public to decide how to do something, you leave it to the people who are trained to do it.

Otherwise you end up trying to please everyone - or worse, you end up trying to please those in society who are just more vocal - and end up with a right mish-mash.

Of course each individual has to make the decision whether they think the editor has got it right or not, but over the years the BBC had demonstrated that it knew what it was doing and people turned to it for the news.

Now audiences were falling for news, but this was probably due to a general dumbing down of society rather than the fault of the news programmes themselves. By making the news "more accessible", society has been allowed to dumb down further, and so news (and the media in general) is always playing catch up.

So how do you measure if the editors are putting out news that people need (but not necessarally want)? Who decides if they're getting it right, if the general public aren't allowed to influence them?

Provided broadcast time is allocated to more in depth discussion of important stories, there is nothing wrong with news programmes 'dumbing down' to increase their viewers. If it increases the number of people who know and understand what's going on in the world, and why, then I'm not bothered how many flashy graphics and simple words are used. If more people are aware of what's happening around them and the world, it will stop the 'dumbing down of society', and eventually reverse it, resulting in more pressure to increase the level of the news. If we write off the lower classes who don't understand what's going on with the wider world, then there's not much point broadcasting anything but Jeremy Kyle, and we'll ensure he has a list of guests to last him a lifetime.

I feel it works quite well at the moment, if programmes are too complex, people complain. If they're too simple, people complain. If the programmes continue to not satisfy the viewers, they go and find something they do want to watch. I don't think giving a small number of people complete control of the entire country's news output while protected from the feelings of the general public would ever be a good idea. News programmes should be open and accessible to all viewers with the producers answerable to the public.