CU
Hello everybody, I have just returned from a two-week holiday during which I was able to watch BBC World, and rather than go through the 150+ page thread to put this in, I thought it would be better in a seperate thread.
Basically, I felt that I should comment on my thoughts of the presentation of the channel as someone who rarely gets to see the channel. I also hope that those of you who live in BBC World-land, or anyone involved, could answer my questions and rubbish my unworkable suggestions (if they are so).
And, so we begin...
And we do so with criticism. One of the most annoying thing I found with BBC World was its commercial breaks. Not the idea of a break itself, but the way it is structured. The so-called "break filler" does indeed "fill" the break, in fact, it is practically the length of the break in some cases. It is also far too repetative. For the first week of my holiday it
always
ended with David Dimbleby trailing
Question Time
, then for the second week it was George Alagiah's programme about Africa. I could re-count the script of these trails by heart I saw them so often!
On a similar note, for the vast majority of my break there were only a few adverts that were played (namely: Lexus, Samsonite suitcases, "The Energy File" , Malaysia "Truly Asia" and a UN HIV/AIDS film), however on the last couple of days, Qatar Airlines and South Africa Airlines popped up. This left me wondering if BBC World gets much custom, and therefore makes profit?
Moving to programme presentation, but sticking to breaks, I noticed that they got better at hiding going into a break that the region was not taking, by not playing the sting, but just the theme (a technical name for this sound would be nice, please). However, they still played the full sting back in. I think the bulletin would run a lot better if they hid this, presumably by the sting being played out in the region taking the break in order for its ending to co-incide with the end of the package playing elsewher. Good in theory, but would it work in practice?
While I like the way the programme begins with the News and Business presenters introducing themselves before going into the headlines, I don't think that the presenters interact well at other points of the bulletin. Firstly, the dont "talk" to each other at the TOTH studio overview, but look very much removed from each other. While not particularly important, it makes the programme lack warmth, in a sense.
However, what I'm really talking about is the handovers. While I only saw a few presenters, (see further below) their attempts were really dire. Either their was no interaction at all, just "Here's X with the sports news", before looking away, followed by "Thanks X " or very little. While I found Lucy Hockings tried to interact, it always seemed like she was being told to make it brief, and therefore it was too rushed. News 24 handles handovers much better, IMO, as they even throw in a little friendly chat with the sports presenter, which can add to the bulletin (I won't, however, get into the utterly annoying informal style of the business news on N24). This makes the programme, and presenters, again feel quite removed.
I found camera angles on the channel quite unimaginative and boring. We were almost always treated to the main shot (fair enough) with the "side shot with screen" only ever appeared rarely at the beginning of the bulletin or, of course, to a live. We then saw a side on shot for "coming up" and the end of the bulletin, with that very annoying shot being used only for the BOTH summary. Someone should be slightly more imaginative with them, it would improve the look of the bulletin, I feel.
I noticed the discrepancies in the titles that others have mentioned here before, however it seems that they have stuck with the worse of the two (IMO) "BBC World from BBC News", despite the fact that presenters introduce it as "BBC News from BBC World". Not major, but it seems odd that they can't decide what to name their output.
I think the bulletin needs a proper close, as has been argued by many regular viewers of the channel. They could easily do this:
-"And that's the latest BBC World News. Stay tuned, coming up next, World Business Report but from me, X in London, goodbye." Followed by a proper close.
They could then play the weather as a seperate outlet, and ditch the BOTH summary, because it is not needed. BBC World isn't really a rolling news channel, so they are coming back to the news unnecessarily anyway, but we continue to see the news scroll pass on the ticker for the duration of the next programme and we will hear it again at the TOTH. Surely this shows there is really no need for it?
One last bit of criticism before I move on to praise: Asia Today. It looks extremely silly for the presenter to close the bulletin and introduce the programme, only for them to appear again after the titles and act as if they weren't just on. There are two ways to fix this. One is to dump the BOTH summary and come back after the weather to it, or they could allow someone else (possibly a business or sport presenter) to try their hand at something different, just to add variety. Also, it should come from the WBR/Sport Today studio to make it feel like a seperate programme. However, I do like the programme's sidebar!
And so on to the promised praise. I very much like the joint bulletins from London & Washington as they add a bit of variety and make the channel feel more "international". They, however, leave me with 2 questions:
1) Are the windows real?
2) What exactly is the role of Katty Kay? (Who, BTW, I rate very highly as a presenter). Is she purely a presenter based in Washington, or BBC World's "woman in Washington" covering stories for them too? I've only ever seen here before on joint bulletins for N24/World, so I assume she belongs purely to them?
During my break, I saw the following presenters:
(regularly)
Lucy Hockings
Nik Gowing
Mike Embley
(weekends)
Adrian Finighan
Alistair Yates
(and who popped up once or twice)
Lyse Doucet
Lyndsey Brancher
David Jessel.
All of the above, I rate very highly as presenters (with the exception of David Jessell, who I found bumbled his way through the bulletin, not helped by his partnership with the equally terrible Business Presenter Jamie (Robertson?)). I particularly like Nik, Lyse and Adrian.
Despite reading here that the channel is very much under-staffed behind the scenes, I have to say it produces, overall, (despite my heavy
constructive!
criticisms) an excellent product. I very much enjoyed watching BBC World, and would like to see an hour of purely international news on N24 each night so as to cover some of the interesting stories World have, but here in Britain we don't see.
And so, on that praising note, I will leave it. I have more to comment on (which I may do if this thread progresses) but, with the length this one post has got to, I feel I should stop.
BBC WORLD - PUTTING NEWS FIRST.
Basically, I felt that I should comment on my thoughts of the presentation of the channel as someone who rarely gets to see the channel. I also hope that those of you who live in BBC World-land, or anyone involved, could answer my questions and rubbish my unworkable suggestions (if they are so).
And, so we begin...
And we do so with criticism. One of the most annoying thing I found with BBC World was its commercial breaks. Not the idea of a break itself, but the way it is structured. The so-called "break filler" does indeed "fill" the break, in fact, it is practically the length of the break in some cases. It is also far too repetative. For the first week of my holiday it
always
ended with David Dimbleby trailing
Question Time
, then for the second week it was George Alagiah's programme about Africa. I could re-count the script of these trails by heart I saw them so often!
On a similar note, for the vast majority of my break there were only a few adverts that were played (namely: Lexus, Samsonite suitcases, "The Energy File" , Malaysia "Truly Asia" and a UN HIV/AIDS film), however on the last couple of days, Qatar Airlines and South Africa Airlines popped up. This left me wondering if BBC World gets much custom, and therefore makes profit?
Moving to programme presentation, but sticking to breaks, I noticed that they got better at hiding going into a break that the region was not taking, by not playing the sting, but just the theme (a technical name for this sound would be nice, please). However, they still played the full sting back in. I think the bulletin would run a lot better if they hid this, presumably by the sting being played out in the region taking the break in order for its ending to co-incide with the end of the package playing elsewher. Good in theory, but would it work in practice?
While I like the way the programme begins with the News and Business presenters introducing themselves before going into the headlines, I don't think that the presenters interact well at other points of the bulletin. Firstly, the dont "talk" to each other at the TOTH studio overview, but look very much removed from each other. While not particularly important, it makes the programme lack warmth, in a sense.
However, what I'm really talking about is the handovers. While I only saw a few presenters, (see further below) their attempts were really dire. Either their was no interaction at all, just "Here's X with the sports news", before looking away, followed by "Thanks X " or very little. While I found Lucy Hockings tried to interact, it always seemed like she was being told to make it brief, and therefore it was too rushed. News 24 handles handovers much better, IMO, as they even throw in a little friendly chat with the sports presenter, which can add to the bulletin (I won't, however, get into the utterly annoying informal style of the business news on N24). This makes the programme, and presenters, again feel quite removed.
I found camera angles on the channel quite unimaginative and boring. We were almost always treated to the main shot (fair enough) with the "side shot with screen" only ever appeared rarely at the beginning of the bulletin or, of course, to a live. We then saw a side on shot for "coming up" and the end of the bulletin, with that very annoying shot being used only for the BOTH summary. Someone should be slightly more imaginative with them, it would improve the look of the bulletin, I feel.
I noticed the discrepancies in the titles that others have mentioned here before, however it seems that they have stuck with the worse of the two (IMO) "BBC World from BBC News", despite the fact that presenters introduce it as "BBC News from BBC World". Not major, but it seems odd that they can't decide what to name their output.
I think the bulletin needs a proper close, as has been argued by many regular viewers of the channel. They could easily do this:
-"And that's the latest BBC World News. Stay tuned, coming up next, World Business Report but from me, X in London, goodbye." Followed by a proper close.
They could then play the weather as a seperate outlet, and ditch the BOTH summary, because it is not needed. BBC World isn't really a rolling news channel, so they are coming back to the news unnecessarily anyway, but we continue to see the news scroll pass on the ticker for the duration of the next programme and we will hear it again at the TOTH. Surely this shows there is really no need for it?
One last bit of criticism before I move on to praise: Asia Today. It looks extremely silly for the presenter to close the bulletin and introduce the programme, only for them to appear again after the titles and act as if they weren't just on. There are two ways to fix this. One is to dump the BOTH summary and come back after the weather to it, or they could allow someone else (possibly a business or sport presenter) to try their hand at something different, just to add variety. Also, it should come from the WBR/Sport Today studio to make it feel like a seperate programme. However, I do like the programme's sidebar!
And so on to the promised praise. I very much like the joint bulletins from London & Washington as they add a bit of variety and make the channel feel more "international". They, however, leave me with 2 questions:
1) Are the windows real?
2) What exactly is the role of Katty Kay? (Who, BTW, I rate very highly as a presenter). Is she purely a presenter based in Washington, or BBC World's "woman in Washington" covering stories for them too? I've only ever seen here before on joint bulletins for N24/World, so I assume she belongs purely to them?
During my break, I saw the following presenters:
(regularly)
Lucy Hockings
Nik Gowing
Mike Embley
(weekends)
Adrian Finighan
Alistair Yates
(and who popped up once or twice)
Lyse Doucet
Lyndsey Brancher
David Jessel.
All of the above, I rate very highly as presenters (with the exception of David Jessell, who I found bumbled his way through the bulletin, not helped by his partnership with the equally terrible Business Presenter Jamie (Robertson?)). I particularly like Nik, Lyse and Adrian.
Despite reading here that the channel is very much under-staffed behind the scenes, I have to say it produces, overall, (despite my heavy
constructive!
criticisms) an excellent product. I very much enjoyed watching BBC World, and would like to see an hour of purely international news on N24 each night so as to cover some of the interesting stories World have, but here in Britain we don't see.
And so, on that praising note, I will leave it. I have more to comment on (which I may do if this thread progresses) but, with the length this one post has got to, I feel I should stop.
BBC WORLD - PUTTING NEWS FIRST.