Five News - New Look

I must agree, if I want to catch up with headlines I'll flick on N24 however if I actually want to "watch the news" it has to be Channel 4. I find everything about it far more watchable and engaging than drivvel like the six or fluff like on ITV. I've really not watched Channel 5 since it went to Sky as I found it vastly inferior to ITN's programme.

Ridiculous lunchtime bulletin - all we learned were that the paparazzi chase celebs for photos, some people are ginger and Kenny Logan is dyslexic - and helpfully point to the website to find help about dyslexia, even though there's nothing on it. And people weren't kidding either when they said it contained no news.


The actual news was covered in less detail than a short news update - indeed they seemed to spend longer on the top story in the headline sequence than in the bulletin itself. That itself was pretty much old news anyhow - that bloke had admitted to having sex with that dead model a couple of weeks ago.

They've officially destroyed the lunchtime bulletin. We had, in all of 10 minutes, ONE report. The rest of the stories were nothing more than a sentence, and the interview was with Kenny Logan. They covered the top story for about 9 seconds and then just moved to the other.
It really was dire.

The comparison could not have been clearer between the yesterday lunchtime bulletin and todays new show on Five. Yesterday we had Andy Bell and Simon Vigar covering stories like Northern Rock . Al Fayed at the Diana Inquest and Jayne Secker was in there somewhere as well. Will these reporters still have any work now with Five after the change to a different level of news content?

Today we had three headline stories covered in a minute and then Britney Spears and the Papparazzi and a story about Ginger provided by Matt Barbett and Ruth Liptrot. Then finally Dyslexic Kenny Logan with his story.

Compared to the relatively lightweight previous 20 minute show we today had 10 minutes of next to nothing in news or anything. At least the previous lunchtime show had at least 5 minutes and a couple of more serious news items. This as I said had nothing like that. I thought it was pathetic and I feel for sorry for Kate Gerbeau ( that is unless she's happy doing a Newsround type show again ).

I saw the vids of yesterdays 5pm show.... are they trying to win some of newsround's viewers???

It was SO newroundish

Half expecting Ellie to be reading the news

I am a producer - and write scripts for presenters for a living. You're right - some do tweak and re-write scripts. But an awful lot of them simply read whatever you stick on prompt.

QUENTIN LETTS gives his verdict on Kaplinsky's Channel Five debut

Fringe stiffer than a trawlerman's salt-encrusted beard, Natasha Kaplinsky made her debut on Channel Five News last night.

A million quid a year they are paying her. It is not enough. Given what the programme could do to her journalistic reputation she should have demanded twice as much.

The make-up! They must have been daubing that face for weeks - called in the paint crew from the Severn bridge, maybe - to get it looking so pink and powdery.

Were those cheeks real? Or were they banks of sticky cosmetic, painstakingly built up by chartered engineers? Shares in Max Factor will surely soar.

Whether or not this Barbie-doll look was right for a modern British newsreader is a different matter. This is London, 2008, for goodness' sake, not Mid West America in the 1980s.

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Daily Mail

You must be a better wordsmith than some. The lady presenter on Breakfast this morning (just before 8.30) couldn't read the line which went along the lines of, "We are all of us something something..." - or words to that effect.

It was a badly composed script, but I presume Bill had read it earlier as he corrected her.

What a crappy review. Three paragraphs on the colour of her blush?

Almost as unjournalistic as the programme he was observing!

The lighting has lots to do with how Natasha looks - its very much a creative decision by the producers and less to do with what she wants, I expect. Looks very American.

Well, what do you expect from the http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/hate_mail.jpg ?

Is it just me who thinks it sounds very stupid when they say "now on five news time for your news, and we're the only news broadcaster that does this..."?

Yup, especially when the BBC have an entire show on N24 called "Your News" which regularly features on the 6.