Euronews launches "Good Morning Europe"

Euronews launched a morning program "Good Morning Europe" from Lyon today. No indication that it's live, though it was a 30 minute show repeated one time, so I'm guessing the first airing was live.

It includes all the usual stable of news you'd expect from Euronews but with an anchor and a handful of live reporters. There's also a social media team "The Cube" that breaks down online media topics and whatnot. It also includes a report on Hawaii that aired on NBC Nightly News. That's not new, but it really shows how far Euronews has changed.

So far, only the English channel has the program. I checked the French channel and it was running its normal anchorless newswheel at the same time.

Highlights:



Full newscast below:

Belle Donati (née Lupton) formerly of France 24 is also a presenter on euronews. I suspect she'll dep for Tesa.

Belle has mentioned that she's doing a segment at 7am BST until her own show launches in the evening later in the year.

Wasn't this sort of thing one of the things they said they'd be able to do once they moved to separate language feeds?

Though there had been a growing amount of pre-recorded on-screen presented strands even before then, albeit with awkward dubbing in anything but the original language.

Positives:

Newsroom set
Presenters are ok, if a bit middle league coming from other international news channels.
Global news agenda.

Negatives:

Giving the NBC influence over Euronews, the straps and the main backdrop are too American in nature. The straps for Good Morning Europe are way too large.

My concern is that Euronews has a niche in the market by letting the pictures tell the story, which is starting to be lost with live programming at breakfast.

The graphics are so large, you'd think its a spoof in a comedy sketch show.

What's funny is that this most recent visual identity was done by Lambie Nairn *and* before NBC announced it was buying a stake in the network. The splitting off of languages into separate channels and the creation of in-vision news were decisions made before NBC.

It's been rumored that Euronews will eventually assume more of the NBC branding, but so far, that hasn't quite happened. Still though, Euronews has been running NBC reports on the English language channel, and the two brands now cross-post each other's articles on their websites.

This is welcome news. I've always thought that Euronews had a lot of potential if it decided to adopt a live, anchored format. For better or for worse, television news tends to connect with viewers better if it's presented by people.

I'm rather unsure as to what gap in the market this is targeting. What does "success" look like for Euronews? It's not going to have the international profile of a CNN or a BBC. Even if it can leverage the strength of NBC, NBC is still principally a domestic US service - apart from new investment, I don't know what benefit it brings to Euro news. It's not exactly a natural fit.

I also question the wisdom of throwing money into expanding the reach of a TV news channel. There's not exactly a growing audience for appointment-viewing straight news bulletins.

Agreed. I think it's a puzzling move and just highlights that a US TV dinosaur is now in charge. The Euronews format actually works quite well for the modern age of instant news and online connectivity. I like being able to drop in and get a short, snappy fix of news, European weather, etc. I can also drop out when the Sport is on, confident I'll be able to flick back in about 3 minutes. Moving away from this towards a more traditional TV news channel will simply mean Euronews gets lost in the crowd. That said, I do love the fly through at the start to the lovely building in Lyon!

I think that the "European" character of Euronews, in contrast to the broader, "global" focus of CNNI or BBC World News, is the channel's biggest potential advantage. Europe is more united than ever; what happens in one country can directly affect people across the continent. Millions of people live in countries other than their own, and particularly the younger generations tend to have a strongly pan-European mindset -- yet the national mainstream media often fail to reflect this.

While there are plenty of channels providing news at the national and the global levels, I believe there is a long-term niche for a strong pan-European player, and if NBC plays its cards right, it could dominate thus field for years to come.

NBC does not have a history of playing its cards right though when it comes to Europe. They never really knew what to do with Super Channel and eventually closed it down. More recently witness the death by a thousand cuts CNBC Europe has undergone since NBC fully took it over - Squawk Box Europe aside there is little of the European channel left, it’s just a relay of CNBC US now.