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Having been in at the birth of News 24 -and still appearing occasionally as a political pundit -I am proud to admit to being an addict of continuous news. Some of my non-media friends and acquaintances, mainly male, middle-aged or retired, have also
become avid viewers.
Most of them value the news channels for the certainty that on the hour, throughout the day, they can get a round up of the main news.
They tend to prefer Sky News and ITV News, finding they have a faster
turnover of stories. Although News 24 gets criticised for having longer
sequences and interviews, it wins praise for providing greater depth
and more analysis.
As a fan of the rolling news channels, I have to declare that my abiding frustration is the continuing failure of my former employers to have the guts and determination to make News 24 the principal showcase for BBC television news.
At the root of my irritation is the seemingly effortless superiority exuded by Sky News and the growing self-confidence of the ITV News channel as it begins to establish a clear identity.
Once I had accepted Television's invitation to spend an evening channel hopping, and knowing what is likely to be going on behind the cameras at News 24, I realised that my sympathies would probably be with the corporation's many correspondents and contributors, still being pulled this way and that by the competing demands of the BBC's numerous
outlets. It was ever thus.
I was anxious to see how the three rival channels squared up to their promises. BBC News 24: "Over 100 correspondents across the world". Sky News. "News channel of the year". ITV News: "The one news channel which has faces you know and trust at fixed times every day."
Instead of waiting for another 9/11 or a repeat of the tsunami, I opted for
what might be a quiet night, that of Valentine's Day, Monday 14 February. The evening in question proved to be a significant test for all three
channels because of the bomb explosion in Beirut that killed Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
What struck me immediately was the fact that all three channels were packaging the pictures in London, rather than being able to offer live reports from Beirut. On ITV News at 8pm, Felicity Barr introduced Harry Smith's package, which gave more of the background about syria's influ-
ence than I had seen before.
It was followed by an in-vision interview with a British journalist in Beirut, Anthony Mills, who gave an eyewitness account. It was a well-paced, comprehensive sequence.
An hour later, Sky News offered a package by Emma Hul followed by a telephone interview out of vision with its long-established Middle East correspondent, Keith Graves. Although it lacked an on-the-spot interview, Sky made up for this towards the end of the item with a "Sky news flash'
to the effect that Reuters had announced that the Lebanese army was about to deploy patrols and check points.
Sky's treatment of this breaking news was complemented with a rolling sequence of headlines in addition to its continuous ticker-tape style headline at the bottom of the screen. It certainly injected fresh interest into the story and held myattention.
BBC pulls rank on its sibling
At I0pm I wanted to watch News 24. For me this would be the telling moment of the evening. Would BBC1 's Ten O'clock News, presented by Huw Edwards, pull rank over News 24? Of course, I knew the answer all along: there was no contest.
Once Edwards had read the headlines, it was straight to Kim Ghattas in Beirut who did a live top and tail to her report. On this occasion the BBC was out in front, and the first to link up live with a correspondent on the
spot.
What about News 24 ? As I had expected the BBC's news channel was trailing well behind. Mathew Price's package was well put together but it lacked the immediacy of the on-the-sport report from the Beirut correspondent Kim Ghattas who was finally switched through to News 24 at 10.17pm.Jon Sopel did a repeat of the live two-way with her that Huw Edwards had done 10 minutes earlier.
ITV show how it should be done
Why, oh why, does the BBC refuse to make its main bulletins an integral part of News 24? ITV News has demonstrated, with great flair, how its flagship bulletins can be incorporated into its news channel, as it did effortlesslyat 10:30pm that evening, when Trevor McDonald appeared
simultaneously on ITVI and ITV News.
The first report, direct from Beirut, was by Brent Sadler who was then interviewed live by McDonald. Again, a fast, pacey sequence. So, full marks for the news channel's promotional blurb: " ...faces you know and trust at fixed times of the day". I can hear BBC management trotting out their lame excuses. "Timings and presentation are different between the bulletins and News 24; so are the sets... What about the regional opt-
outs?. We have to think of the BBCl audience." Yes, yes, that's true but news on demand is increasingly what viewers want.
What the Beeb's bosses fail to get to grips with is the waste of effort and resources that go into this unnecessary duplication. News 24's response, when the Ten O'clock News was live in Beirut and the news channel was waiting patiently to link up with Kim Ghattas, was to fill in the time with a
lengthy but entirely predictable live interview from Liverpool with the
Labour MP Louise Ellman of Friends of Israel.
She was reacting to Ken Livingstone's refusal to apologise for likening a Jewish reporter from the Evening Standard to a concentration camp guard. The interview was a diversion and out of place seven minutes into a news sequence. I am sure Kate Silverton realised only too well that it should have been wrapped up after the first two answers.
I fear this failure by the management to rationalise the BBC's news output has made life on News 24 something of a treadmill. If that Page 7 half hour of output had been filled with the Ten O'clock News, it would have given the News 24 team time to take stock, repackage and think through their next sequence.
Again, I have to admit, ITV News -unlike the BBC has shown how to take full advantage of the entire ITV output. I was fascinated in the half hour from 9:30pm to see the imaginative use it made of reports from the regions.
ITV Wales reported on a murder appeal in Swansea; a house explosion in Essex was covered by Anglia News; a report on wacky wedding vows from Calendar News was followed with a second offering from Anglia News by Claire McGlasson, who gave a revealing account of how a dozen
red roses for Valentine's Day purchased at a Dutch flower auction ended up costing £55 when delivered to a housewife at Cottenham near Cambridge.
Small earthquake in Wales: not many heard it right
To be fair to the BBC, the strength of its regional correspondents was amply demonstrated in Denis Murray's report about the growing protests in Belfast over the alleged murder of Robert McCartney by an IRA gang. Unlike Penny Marshall on ITV News, Murray made the political connection and put Sinn Fein on the spot.
The only other breaking news of the evening, reported first on News 24 at 8:27pm, was a small earthquake in North Wales. All three channels agreed there were no injuries or damage but seemed confused about the location. A map on News 24 pinpointed Bangor; Sky News plumped for Llandudno; and ITV opted for Abergele.
My four-hour stint viewing rolling news had reinforced my lingering sense of irritation. Why hadn't News 24 wiped the floor with the competition? Yes, the BBC has vastly more correspondents than its rivals but it just
cannot seem to get its act together.
News 24's set, despite its re-launch, lacks the immediacy and visual interest of Sky and ITV. The text of Sky's headlines is fresher and punchier; ITV's picture selection is far superior to the BBC's.
Perhaps I can be allowed a few personal reflections. Given the age profile of its viewers, why does News 24 tend to shun older presenters? From the anecdotal evidence I hear, part of the appeal of Sky News is that it does value age and experience.
When I switched to Skyat 7:47pm I was pleased to see Jeremy hompson was presenting. In the 1979 general election we were both assigned by the BBC to cover the campaign of the Uberalleader David Steel.
The days when nothing happened after midnight
My three decades as a BBC correspondent were a rollercoaster ride of endless expansion and the arrival of one new service after another. Way back in the early 1970s breakfast television was but a distant dream; as a radio reporter, my last outlet of the day in the BBC's entire domestic daily output was the midnight newsroom of Radio 2.
By the early 1990s it was time to stand back: there would have to be flexible working if the BBC was to stand any chance of sustaining all the services it had established and was planning. Bi-medial working was the price that would have to be paid: radio correspondents would have to
double up as television reporters and vice versa.
BBC Westminster, where I had already spent several years, was the ideal launch pad. It already supplied political news for both TV and
radio and, most importantly of all from the management's point of view, it was an island site, free from the restrictive practices which had become so ingrained at TV Centre and Broadcasting House.
In December 1991 I was assigned to what at the time was the most extensive bi-medial operation to date, I was a political correspondent and, backed up by a news organiser-producer, we set off for Liverpool and then the West Midlands to report on the expulsion of two Labour MPs, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist.
Over five days, with the help of two BBC regions and three local radio stations, we managed to meet the requirements of both TV and radio. At the request of Chris Cramer, then head of TV news, I was asked to write a diary of our trip for the BBC's house magazine Ariel.
I described the journalistic satisfaction I derived from having to "think simultaneously" about the different demands of TV and radio but moaned about the problems caused by the competing deadlines of the many
bulletins and programmes and the "creaky communications interface" between TV Centre and Broadcasting House.
The limits of expansion
My conclusion was that ifbi-medial working did free up resources to allow more news and technical staff to get out on assignments then it could "only strengthen" the BBC's journalism.
What I did not know then but probably sensed was the management's failure to prioritise and prevent overstretch. In November 1994 I was one of 100 BBC employees plucked out of the hat to attend an "extending choice" seminar at which we were given a pep talk by John Birt.
Would there ever come a day, I asked, when the BBC might have to concentrate on sustaining and defending what we do best? Must we go on expanding our services, spreading ever more thinly our expertise and
resources? The director general gave me a withering look:"Of course we have to embrace each new challenge, each new service, we can't stand still..."
Birt went on to become Tony Blair's blue-skies thinker and the BBC is still thinking about what to do about News 24.
Nicholas jones completed 30 years with the BBC in October 2002 as an industrial and political coITespondent. He writes and lectures on politics and dIe media. His books include Strikes and the Media, Soundbites and Spin Doctors, Sultans of Spin and The Control Freaks.
Copyright: Television
Having been in at the birth of News 24 -and still appearing occasionally as a political pundit -I am proud to admit to being an addict of continuous news. Some of my non-media friends and acquaintances, mainly male, middle-aged or retired, have also
become avid viewers.
Most of them value the news channels for the certainty that on the hour, throughout the day, they can get a round up of the main news.
They tend to prefer Sky News and ITV News, finding they have a faster
turnover of stories. Although News 24 gets criticised for having longer
sequences and interviews, it wins praise for providing greater depth
and more analysis.
As a fan of the rolling news channels, I have to declare that my abiding frustration is the continuing failure of my former employers to have the guts and determination to make News 24 the principal showcase for BBC television news.
At the root of my irritation is the seemingly effortless superiority exuded by Sky News and the growing self-confidence of the ITV News channel as it begins to establish a clear identity.
Once I had accepted Television's invitation to spend an evening channel hopping, and knowing what is likely to be going on behind the cameras at News 24, I realised that my sympathies would probably be with the corporation's many correspondents and contributors, still being pulled this way and that by the competing demands of the BBC's numerous
outlets. It was ever thus.
I was anxious to see how the three rival channels squared up to their promises. BBC News 24: "Over 100 correspondents across the world". Sky News. "News channel of the year". ITV News: "The one news channel which has faces you know and trust at fixed times every day."
Instead of waiting for another 9/11 or a repeat of the tsunami, I opted for
what might be a quiet night, that of Valentine's Day, Monday 14 February. The evening in question proved to be a significant test for all three
channels because of the bomb explosion in Beirut that killed Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
What struck me immediately was the fact that all three channels were packaging the pictures in London, rather than being able to offer live reports from Beirut. On ITV News at 8pm, Felicity Barr introduced Harry Smith's package, which gave more of the background about syria's influ-
ence than I had seen before.
It was followed by an in-vision interview with a British journalist in Beirut, Anthony Mills, who gave an eyewitness account. It was a well-paced, comprehensive sequence.
An hour later, Sky News offered a package by Emma Hul followed by a telephone interview out of vision with its long-established Middle East correspondent, Keith Graves. Although it lacked an on-the-spot interview, Sky made up for this towards the end of the item with a "Sky news flash'
to the effect that Reuters had announced that the Lebanese army was about to deploy patrols and check points.
Sky's treatment of this breaking news was complemented with a rolling sequence of headlines in addition to its continuous ticker-tape style headline at the bottom of the screen. It certainly injected fresh interest into the story and held myattention.
BBC pulls rank on its sibling
At I0pm I wanted to watch News 24. For me this would be the telling moment of the evening. Would BBC1 's Ten O'clock News, presented by Huw Edwards, pull rank over News 24? Of course, I knew the answer all along: there was no contest.
Once Edwards had read the headlines, it was straight to Kim Ghattas in Beirut who did a live top and tail to her report. On this occasion the BBC was out in front, and the first to link up live with a correspondent on the
spot.
What about News 24 ? As I had expected the BBC's news channel was trailing well behind. Mathew Price's package was well put together but it lacked the immediacy of the on-the-sport report from the Beirut correspondent Kim Ghattas who was finally switched through to News 24 at 10.17pm.Jon Sopel did a repeat of the live two-way with her that Huw Edwards had done 10 minutes earlier.
ITV show how it should be done
Why, oh why, does the BBC refuse to make its main bulletins an integral part of News 24? ITV News has demonstrated, with great flair, how its flagship bulletins can be incorporated into its news channel, as it did effortlesslyat 10:30pm that evening, when Trevor McDonald appeared
simultaneously on ITVI and ITV News.
The first report, direct from Beirut, was by Brent Sadler who was then interviewed live by McDonald. Again, a fast, pacey sequence. So, full marks for the news channel's promotional blurb: " ...faces you know and trust at fixed times of the day". I can hear BBC management trotting out their lame excuses. "Timings and presentation are different between the bulletins and News 24; so are the sets... What about the regional opt-
outs?. We have to think of the BBCl audience." Yes, yes, that's true but news on demand is increasingly what viewers want.
What the Beeb's bosses fail to get to grips with is the waste of effort and resources that go into this unnecessary duplication. News 24's response, when the Ten O'clock News was live in Beirut and the news channel was waiting patiently to link up with Kim Ghattas, was to fill in the time with a
lengthy but entirely predictable live interview from Liverpool with the
Labour MP Louise Ellman of Friends of Israel.
She was reacting to Ken Livingstone's refusal to apologise for likening a Jewish reporter from the Evening Standard to a concentration camp guard. The interview was a diversion and out of place seven minutes into a news sequence. I am sure Kate Silverton realised only too well that it should have been wrapped up after the first two answers.
I fear this failure by the management to rationalise the BBC's news output has made life on News 24 something of a treadmill. If that Page 7 half hour of output had been filled with the Ten O'clock News, it would have given the News 24 team time to take stock, repackage and think through their next sequence.
Again, I have to admit, ITV News -unlike the BBC has shown how to take full advantage of the entire ITV output. I was fascinated in the half hour from 9:30pm to see the imaginative use it made of reports from the regions.
ITV Wales reported on a murder appeal in Swansea; a house explosion in Essex was covered by Anglia News; a report on wacky wedding vows from Calendar News was followed with a second offering from Anglia News by Claire McGlasson, who gave a revealing account of how a dozen
red roses for Valentine's Day purchased at a Dutch flower auction ended up costing £55 when delivered to a housewife at Cottenham near Cambridge.
Small earthquake in Wales: not many heard it right
To be fair to the BBC, the strength of its regional correspondents was amply demonstrated in Denis Murray's report about the growing protests in Belfast over the alleged murder of Robert McCartney by an IRA gang. Unlike Penny Marshall on ITV News, Murray made the political connection and put Sinn Fein on the spot.
The only other breaking news of the evening, reported first on News 24 at 8:27pm, was a small earthquake in North Wales. All three channels agreed there were no injuries or damage but seemed confused about the location. A map on News 24 pinpointed Bangor; Sky News plumped for Llandudno; and ITV opted for Abergele.
My four-hour stint viewing rolling news had reinforced my lingering sense of irritation. Why hadn't News 24 wiped the floor with the competition? Yes, the BBC has vastly more correspondents than its rivals but it just
cannot seem to get its act together.
News 24's set, despite its re-launch, lacks the immediacy and visual interest of Sky and ITV. The text of Sky's headlines is fresher and punchier; ITV's picture selection is far superior to the BBC's.
Perhaps I can be allowed a few personal reflections. Given the age profile of its viewers, why does News 24 tend to shun older presenters? From the anecdotal evidence I hear, part of the appeal of Sky News is that it does value age and experience.
When I switched to Skyat 7:47pm I was pleased to see Jeremy hompson was presenting. In the 1979 general election we were both assigned by the BBC to cover the campaign of the Uberalleader David Steel.
The days when nothing happened after midnight
My three decades as a BBC correspondent were a rollercoaster ride of endless expansion and the arrival of one new service after another. Way back in the early 1970s breakfast television was but a distant dream; as a radio reporter, my last outlet of the day in the BBC's entire domestic daily output was the midnight newsroom of Radio 2.
By the early 1990s it was time to stand back: there would have to be flexible working if the BBC was to stand any chance of sustaining all the services it had established and was planning. Bi-medial working was the price that would have to be paid: radio correspondents would have to
double up as television reporters and vice versa.
BBC Westminster, where I had already spent several years, was the ideal launch pad. It already supplied political news for both TV and
radio and, most importantly of all from the management's point of view, it was an island site, free from the restrictive practices which had become so ingrained at TV Centre and Broadcasting House.
In December 1991 I was assigned to what at the time was the most extensive bi-medial operation to date, I was a political correspondent and, backed up by a news organiser-producer, we set off for Liverpool and then the West Midlands to report on the expulsion of two Labour MPs, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist.
Over five days, with the help of two BBC regions and three local radio stations, we managed to meet the requirements of both TV and radio. At the request of Chris Cramer, then head of TV news, I was asked to write a diary of our trip for the BBC's house magazine Ariel.
I described the journalistic satisfaction I derived from having to "think simultaneously" about the different demands of TV and radio but moaned about the problems caused by the competing deadlines of the many
bulletins and programmes and the "creaky communications interface" between TV Centre and Broadcasting House.
The limits of expansion
My conclusion was that ifbi-medial working did free up resources to allow more news and technical staff to get out on assignments then it could "only strengthen" the BBC's journalism.
What I did not know then but probably sensed was the management's failure to prioritise and prevent overstretch. In November 1994 I was one of 100 BBC employees plucked out of the hat to attend an "extending choice" seminar at which we were given a pep talk by John Birt.
Would there ever come a day, I asked, when the BBC might have to concentrate on sustaining and defending what we do best? Must we go on expanding our services, spreading ever more thinly our expertise and
resources? The director general gave me a withering look:"Of course we have to embrace each new challenge, each new service, we can't stand still..."
Birt went on to become Tony Blair's blue-skies thinker and the BBC is still thinking about what to do about News 24.
Nicholas jones completed 30 years with the BBC in October 2002 as an industrial and political coITespondent. He writes and lectures on politics and dIe media. His books include Strikes and the Media, Soundbites and Spin Doctors, Sultans of Spin and The Control Freaks.
Copyright: Television
