Back to the rebrand: what does everyone think David Lowe will do to the music this time? Do you think he'll keep the same themes as now but update them or come up with a completely new theme based on his BBC News style?
I personally hope he comes up with something a bit different. The national news theme, rolled out across News 24 and World in 2007, has become a bit dated, in my opinion. After all, it has been used in one form or another since 1999. I'd like fresh themes.
I'd expect the beeps to stay in some format but I think they will be quite radically changed, perhaps more up tempo and possibly more electronic. I can't see the beeps going just yet as they are one of the key identities of BBC News.
I agree, the beeps have to stay. I think David Lowe has been a very talented composer for the BBC, looking back on the last 9 years. The same key elements (beeps, drums, and other SFXs) have featured throughout the majority of his work yet he's managed to make many, many different themes. I do wonder sometimes how he manages to come up with yet another theme in that style. I wouldn't know where to start!
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.
I have watched programmes from this era and found them to be refreshing, clear and intelligent.
Equally I've watched them, many, many of them, and found them pompous, distancing, and amazingly they managed to be both patronising and elitist. There was usually an undertone that if you didn't know the background to a story (say Gaza/West Bank or the ERM) that you were probably too stupid to understand it as a result... I suspect many adults learned more from watching Newsrounds of that era than the Six...
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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.
Yep - and a terrible formula it was to make watchable TV that also informed its audience.
Not all stories fit into the "Link VT" or "Link Voiceover" mould. Sometimes a live interview is the best way of telling a story, sometimes a graphic explainer is. Trying to package a story with no pictures makes dull TV that nobody wants to watch, nobody really listens to, and thus doesn't serve its purpose. If you are trying to explain something abstract, and have a reporter who is engaging, a graphic explainer can be a far more effective tool to tell a story than a 1'30" library-fest.
Science reporting suffered under the old format terribly - as many scientific stories are incredibly picture challenged. You can only show so many people in white coats looking through microscopes before the audience is comatose with boredom. Have a reporter in the studio with 3D graphics that actually explain the concept clearly, allow him or her to interact with the graphics naturally, and you have an engaging method of illustrating a story that would otherwise probably not have been reported at all.
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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.
I agree that the current news style is far from perfect. Often special reports are only special because they are a minute longer than they should be, and you go live to somewhere just because you can. Obviously this is bonkers.
But would you really go back to an era where most news programmes had no live interviews, no reporters in the studio, that consisted of acres of old library pictures (so formulaic you could memorise the library tape numbers for the old favourites?) I know I wouldn't...
The twin jobs of a news bulletin are to engage as large an audience as possible and tell them as much important information as possible. If you tell the important information in a way that few viewers watch - you've failed. If you tell lots of people almost nothing - you've failed. Balancing the two isn't easy - but if you tried running a 1994 Six O'Clock News bulletin in 2008 - you'd lose a huge chunk of your audience.
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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.
You have to balance the two.
If people stop watching your bulletins - who better to ask why than them?
You don't give them everything they want - if you did you'd have a 10 minute weather forecast and only cover stories within 15 miles of where they live... However you do listen to why they watch what they watch, and why they don't watch what they don't. You have to analyse this and take it on board.
It doesn't mean you stop covering important stories because you think the audience will switch off - but it does make you think "How can I cover this important story in a way that won't make the audience switch off" It is your duty as a responsible news producer to provide a bulletin that people will watch.
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Back then news had authority. Now it's like listening to gossip from a neighbour.
Back then the news had a faux authority - often delivered by people who could have been actors or actresses - many of whom had never been journalists, and who were hired because they had a deep voice and a nice way of wearing a suit. All they had to do was read a few sentences from an autocue every few minutes and check they could pronounce the odd place name and foreign stateman's name.
There was pompous OTT music, cold and distancing graphics and sets. (Thank God for The Day Today) Some of us look back fondly on these times - but a large chunk of the audience didn't watch at all, and this was in the days before multi-channel TV was in such a large number of UK homes.
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noggin posted:
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.
It makes me nauseous reading those words.
Sorry to burst your bubble - but if you think broadcasters, particularly news broadcasters, could survive without absorbing how the TV and media landscape has changed over the past 15 years, you're living in a dreamworld.
You have to know what the audience thinks, what it likes, what it doesn't like etc. If you don't make the mistake of assuming the audience is thick - and instead assume that they are watching a news bulletin because they want to know what is happening in the world that is important to them, might interest them or might impact them, or that they would want to know about because it is important, then you are on the right tracks. Equally you can't assume every viewer has a massive store of background information on a story.
It is very easy to report complex stories if you assume the audience knows most of the background already - far harder to do a "New joiners start here" piece that doesn't patronise, but neither assumes prior knowledge, yet doesn't insult those that DO have prior knowledge.
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Providing news is a duty, not something channels should do to get audiences.
That only works if the audience treats WATCHING news as a duty. They don't.
There is no point making a news programme that 300,000 people watch when you can make one covering the same stories, in a different way, but still inform your audience, but get 5.000,000 people watching.
If you make news programmes that are "duty views" these days - you don't get an audience, and you've failed. You've informed almost nobody.
Desk job at the BBC
A few teething problems at the BBC's swish new multimedia newsroom, which goes live in a few weeks' time. Cramming all those radio, TV and online journalists into one space is proving to be a challenge, but BBC bosses have come up with an inspired solution; they've decided to order some smaller desks.
It's going to be a nightmare for those working in there when all the moves are finished. It's going to be very claustrophobic. At the moment, the middle section of the newsroom (the bit at the foot of the stairs) is going unused and is a bit of a mess.
Remember that old things are still lying around on the system, and get used. For example, I believe the BBC's anonymous FTP archive still uses an ASCII rendering of the late 80s-1997 logo in the "README.TXT" file.
Why are there so many on air mistakes going out on BBC News and BBC News 24 they are becoming more and more frequent. Is it because of the cost-cutting?
Also, on another point - will the weather be presented from N6 on News 24 or from a green screen. Would make sense for them to use the extra screens to do the weather in a Sky News style.
Why are there so many on air mistakes going out on BBC News and BBC News 24 they are becoming more and more frequent. Is it because of the cost-cutting?
Why are there so many on air mistakes going out on BBC News and BBC News 24 they are becoming more and more frequent. Is it because of the cost-cutting?
But like the other day on News 24 - "and now heres the weather with Daniel Corbett" - and they play a report from China about the Olympics.
Also like the 6pm News when there was no weather forecast just the weather presenter talking about the weather in front of a BBC Weather caption due to some other technical failure.
But like the other day on News 24 - "and now heres the weather with Daniel Corbett" - and they play a report from China about the Olympics.
Also like the 6pm News when there was no weather forecast just the weather presentr talking about the weather in front of a BBC Weather
caption due to some other technical failure.
Worzel, I hope you never slip up in anything you ever say...that would be so wrong...
I noticed when Sian mentioned the BBC News website, the image with the globe, which gives us a sneak peak of the new look, wasn't there. It was just red.
I noticed when Sian mentioned the BBC News website, the image with the globe, which gives us a sneak peak of the new look, wasn't there. It was just red.