Very messy cut at the end of ITV's election coverage, right in the middle of Alastair talking. Bit of a shame we didn't have proper ending to be honest.
Well, I ended up sticking with ITV last night and found it much more polished than the BBC. Despite the lack of grand presentation, it's to ITV's credit that the content was pretty much spot on. I would've preferred a little more analysis of results feeding in and fewer interviews, but on the whole, it wasn't shabby at all. Tom Bradby was better than I expected but definitely lacked the energy and enthusiasm exuded by Alastair Stewart in 2010. Just a shame the ratings put the coverage behind C4 again.
I've seen nothing of ITV's coverage during the day - so I hope there's some kind soul out there who's been recording the whole thing and wouldn't mind sharing a couple of clips... please...
I (like many I guess) tried BBC, ITV and Sky News (forgot about Channel 4, oops). In the end I ended up staying with the Beeb, wasn't impressed by ITV this time around (found it boring to be honest) and Sky soon went off as soon as Kay Burley appeared...
That's not to say I thought the BBC were great either, with Dimbleby not impressing. I found his "for gods sake" moment interesting...
Alastair Stewart with the Saturday bulletins, obviously due to the coalition talks that were expected. You don't often get the A team even the B team in on Saturdays. Two weeks running of course as Mary was on duty last week due to the royal baby.
Where do you get to see/view rehearsals? Is this a Sky thing?
I would think that if the rehearsals were available anywhere for the general public to watch, someone would be fired.
I recorded the ITV coverage and had a quick spool through it yesterday, it all seemed a bit dull coming from the usual news studio. One thing that I thought got things off to a bit of a ropey start was how they initially reacted to the exit poll where it seemed to take them ages to actually notice the story. Bradby just read the numbers out and then Julie went through how a potential coalition could be formed, by saying the Tories could go with the Lib Dems and get this number and Labour could go with the SNP and get this number. It was only then they actually seemed to acknowledge the poll itself, and it was if they were working from a script which assumed it would be a dead heat and they didn't bother to change that when the poll suggested otherwise.
Meanwhile on both the Beeb and C4 it was immediately spotted that the Labour vote had collapsed and the Tories were heading to victory and Nick Robinson and Gary Gibbon both immediately started talking about that, while Julie Etchingham was still banging on about potential coalitions.
Although the ITV exit poll did put all the figures on screen straight away, which meant you could see that the numbers didn't (at that point) add up for anyone. The BBC presentation slowed that information down a little. Still, none as bad as BBC Scotland, who at the stroke of 10pm spent ages explaining what an exit poll was, who had conducted it etc etc.
On the subject of repeats - had a glance at the BBC Parliament screening yesterday and it appears to be the news channel feed so no regional bulletins, just the filler material (which incidentally was handled very well and meant NC was spared London and BBC1 HD was spared the red screen of doom). However I noticed they'd taken at least some of the news/weather bulletins out - Dimbleby's sign off cut straight to a sting and Huw Edwards sitting in the chair.
Thinking back to 1979, the BBC4 screening of the overnight coverage ended with some extra footage from the studio after they'd gone off air, which complicates our earlier theory about it being a recording of BBC1 output.
