Yet to see a full National broadcast so am not going to comment until then, esp re graphics.
Otherwise though, the new look for Breakfast and News has its good and bad points.
On the positive side of things I think the desk is stunning, if a liitle small as josh205 says – a magnificent piece of design, especially when orange on Breakfast. I’d remind you of those light-up yoyos you used to get in boxes of Frosties years ago
. The little coffee table equally so, including its sunken LCD monitor – very neat indeed.
http://www.thisisfive.co.uk/presbits/bbcnews2006/5.jpg
Similarly the grey theme (which is very much so this year’s colour in fashion circles apparently) is very smart and sophisticated, if perhaps a little dead and austere when used on the acres of flooring on both Breakfast and News.
The crisp lines everywhere are also nice and efficient.
On the downside - and I really don’t think this has been emphasised enough - the joins in the screen walls as previously highlighted, the corner in particular, are nothing short of shocking. Shocking because very simply this
is
the set – a set in its most basic and important form being the provision of a backdrop to the principal shots of presenters. If anything, you design this first and work everything else around it,
especially
for news-type programmes where the MS/MCU is so hugely critical. I couldn’t believe the BBC messed up so spectacularly on this front – the joins behind the principal two-shot, around which the entire production revolves, is frankly hideous. How this was passed off as acceptable I simply do not know.
Also as mentioned, straight away what strikes you is the practicality of the floor and the baking tray – how often are these going to be cleaned? Also three years of people clambering up over that raised edge is surely going to scuff and chip and hack away at the moulding?
Above all though, whilst I like the smartness of the new look, I am disappointed about the underlying concept at work here: the idea of a ‘room’ from which the news is broadcast. It’s okay for Breakfast as an almost contained programme in itself, but not National News.
News ought to be broadcast from a more generic, detached place in Televisionland, not a very obviously claustrophobic room in the BBC News Centre. The hard lines, suspended ceiling units, and distinctively walled boundaries generate a very blocky, overly-distracting room-like backdrop to the presentation of national news.
In my view if you’re going to go for the whole techno-ITV/Sky look, you simply need the space to be less claustrophobic and the technology less contrived, while the more traditional ‘quality materials’ approach can get away a lot more with smaller spaces.
I think this comes to the fore in the News MCU of presenter where the backdrop appears to be too close and ‘room-like’ if that makes any sense – it isn’t sufficiently subtle and detached from the newsreader. Also not a fan of the image design which looks rather harsh and washed out - might grow better over time.
http://www.thisisfive.co.uk/presbits/bbcnews2006/29.jpg
I shall wait to see a live broadcast though to form any full view on it.
Overall I think it’s an improvement on the previous look – doesn’t it look so dirty and cluttered now
http://thetvroom.com/images-bbc-one-news/news-03/ten/end-1n2.jpg
…but the new look is perhaps a bit too commercial and ever so slightly dead for the BBC. I know everyone expects the BBC to be grand and conservative and familiar, but this is perhaps going a bit too far in the opposite direction.
