just done an interview about the girl on the suicide pact with the gentleman they spoke to in the newsroom just to his left sat down was alaistair stewart and katie derham, thought i was strange i expected them to be rehearsing/preparing for the 6 o'clock bulletin
1) could have been recorded
2) isn't the studio for london news adjacent to the newsroom, so it's not that hard for them to walk across and rehearse?
Today as bin a gud day on the news channel alaistair ad a very good show today and then with steve and felicity they were going to show that craft landing on a parachute but it crashed landed, anyway part from that downbit it was quite an eventful day
This article by Deborah Turness appears in Press Gazette this week.
‘We’ve only just begun’
First came the dreadful sound of explosions and the crackle of gunfire.
Moments later the horrific images of children, many naked and covered in blood, running for their lives. Then, reporting live from the middle of the firefight inside the school, ITV correspondent Julian Manyon broke the news that over a hundred people — most of them children — had been slaughtered.
This was television news at its most painful — and most powerful.
Every viewer an eyewitness to the terrible events, as the images were pumped live from Beslan’s school Number One, directly into Britain’s living rooms.
No “reality TV” format can achieve the impact of THIS reality.
No other genre can engage the viewer as television news can.
That’s because TV news is real.
Whether the latest from Sudan, or news of an interest rise, fact is ranked above fiction because it has the capacity to physically change the world and the lives of the people watching. It’s real-life drama, it’s important, it matters.
So, if news is the best drama on television, why are fewer people watching? In the last decade, the amount of choice available to news viewers has exploded. Over the same period the overall numbers of people choosing to watch news have fallen. They’re buying fewer newspapers too, and many have decided that they can’t be bothered to vote. They’ve disengaged from politics and the world around them, and in greater numbers seek escapism via the remote control.
Today’s stressed-out viewers have more than a hundred channels competing for their time. The 18-25s, the C2DE social groups and ethnic minorities have become the hardest to reach — tuning out of news and turning over to something “less boring” instead.
News cannot exist in a vacuum, we are not immune from the realities of the multi-channel TV landscape.
The golden Gordon Honeycombe days are long gone — when viewers sat obediently on their sofas to be fed the same diet of news, whichever channel they watched. Yesterday’s captive news viewer is today’s consumer, choosing from a menu of options where and how to digest news.
So how do we convince viewers that they should make a daily “appointment to view” our news programmes? And why should they be loyal to our news above all others? The answer is that we need to work harder to engage the viewer, we have to innovate, to rethink how we produce and present our programmes. We need to tell why they need to care about the stories we cover, or make them relevant to their lives. Most of all we need to be distinctive. If we’re not, our programmes will disappear into the mush of “ambient news”.
At ITV News we believe we’re making the most distinctive, highquality news in Britain. Only part of that achievement can be put down to the launch earlier this year of our innovative TV news set. But our “theatre for news” has made an impression on the industry, prompting the question at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival if “TV news has gone too far”.
In a session called “Not The Nine O’Clock News” we debated the age-old issues of “dumbingdown”, of “style-over-substance”, and whether we’re all about to disappear up our own virtual reality systems.
I firmly believe that quite the opposite is true. Viewers know when they’re being short-changed, they smell cheap news a mile off.
When Ofcom recently asked viewers what they considered to be the most important content for channels with a public service remit, news programmes beat entertainment shows to take pole position.
Every focus group I’ve ever been to reinforces the message — TV news is trusted, it’s impartial, it “gives it to them straight”. That role comes with responsibilities, and a “news-lite” agenda skewed to consumer and entertainment would soon be found out.
What’s now going on in the industry is the opposite of dumbing down. In our quest to be distinctive, we encourage original journalism — regularly breaking our own stories and exclusive interviews. Our international correspondents offer eyewitness reports from around the world.
Around this content we build our programmes that target specific audiences at different times of the day.
For example, on the Evening News we’ve developed a “CloseUp” strand, which zooms in on a key element of the top story. We use it, among other things, to answer the key question of the day. (Who is the Chechen rebel leader behind the Beslan massacre, and what drove him to such depths of inhumanity?) It adds value and gives greater depth.
And for the same teatime audiences at 6.30pm we apply the “does it affect me?” factor. (Should I give my child the MMR vaccine? How much has my mortgage gone up?) That turns our news programme into a news SERVICE, and the “does it affect me?” factor is most powerful when applied to the area of public policy and politics.
It is not our job to tackle voter apathy. But it IS our job to explain how and why political decisions will touch the lives of viewers. If in doing that job well we encourage people to vote, then that’s a positive outcome.
In his “grumpy old man” McTaggart Lecture in Edinburgh, John Humphrys said it’s not our job to make politics fun, that former BBC director general Greg Dyke got it wrong when he tried to build a bridge between Westminster and the world of the 18 to 35s. Well, I’d like to know the average age of the Radio 4 Today listener, and I would like to ask Mr Humphrys who his programme will be broadcasting to when they’re all dead.
The search to engage involves taking risks, trying new formats, and sometimes ripping up the whole format and starting again.
The Evening News, its viewers arriving back from work, feeding the kids, slap bang in the middle of the family rush hour, exploits our new set more than any other programme we make. We relaunched the look of ITV News because we wanted to bring the drama and the excitement of news pictures into the studio environment.
The “theatre of news” is a giant, curved blank canvas, where every day the scene is set with new and ever-changing images of world events. One viewer recently said: “It takes you straight to the action, right from the top of the show.”
And when events need explaining, the set becomes our hub for news analysis. Our presenters can break down the facts, analyse the pictures, get behind the headlines.
It was a risk — but it appears to have paid off.
And viewing figures reflect that.
Since rolling out the same philosophy to the ITV regions, the 6pm til 7pm news hour has increased its audience by six per cent year on year. Meanwhile, the BBC Six O’clock News, which has, apparently, stepped back from its attempts to make popular TV news that engages with the viewer, has lost three per cent.
Ofcom’s recent review of public service broadcasting reveals that terrestrial television’s overall share of 16 to 34-year-olds has plummetted from 84 per cent to just 69 per cent. They are the viewers switching to multi-channel TV, the same people who are increasingly getting their news via the internet, and the ones who’ll be the first to get the headlines on their 3-G phones. We ignore their world and the new media landscape at our peril.
The 3pm hour on the News Channel really is very good when both Mark and Mary are presenting.
They are able to be much more relaxed than they are on ITV1 bulletins and there is plenty of banter.
With UK Today and typically two or three political interviews, it's a very good hour.
They're a great partnership, when they're both there, or rather when Mary's there!!!! Not only has Mark Austin learnt to throw his papers down in time with the title music, he's now learnt 2 do it at the same time as Mary, either well rehearsed or pure coincidence!!!!! Think we should call them red and yellow (after two other famous m&ms)
The 3pm hour on the News Channel really is very good when both Mark and Mary are presenting.
They are able to be much more relaxed than they are on ITV1 bulletins and there is plenty of banter.
With UK Today and typically two or three political interviews, it's a very good hour.
They're a great partnership, when they're both there, or rather when Mary's there!!!! Not only has Mark Austin learnt to throw his papers down in time with the title music, he's now learnt 2 do it at the same time as Mary, either well rehearsed or pure coincidence!!!!! Think we should call them red and yellow (after two other famous m&ms)
I saw it on Tuesday at 3.30pm and I thought it was very good, they're not as good on the Evening News but at 3pm they're brilliant, when it gets later on into the hour they are very laid back and seem to talk amongst themselves and get on very well, I think Mark was still going on about his poor Maths again while reading out the Money News, plus they handled it well during UK Today as the guy reading for North Tonight was cut off for a Testcard saying 'Central Abingdon' as they had Central News South before it. They also get on well with whoever is doing UK Today in the regions, though everytime I switch on they always have Anglia Tonight as one of the regions!
It is good TV and good for the NC, second favourite pairing on the NC, Steve and Felicity are my favourites as they get on very well and are good at Newsreading and handling Breaking News. Andrew and Lucy are also good, but I am usually never up that early!
[they handled it well during UK Today as the guy reading for North Tonight was cut off for a Testcard saying 'Central Abingdon' as they had Central News South before it. They also get on well with whoever is doing UK Today in the regions, though everytime I switch on they always have Anglia Tonight as one of the regions!
How interesting you notice Anglia is ALWAYS doing the bounce! I thought only I thought that.....
Minor - but would be nice to correct - issue with the ITVNC..
Sunday's Live with Angela Rippon - used on the virtual screen for the paper review titles - Daily Mastheads rather than Sunday Mastheads. It would be nice to see this changed.