New Meridian Set - preview tonight!

Did anyone else see that shambles on Meridian South just now? For the first 10 minutes of the 3pm bulletin, there was absolutely no sound at all, after which Carolyn Sim magically transformed into Mary Green as we were switched over (for reasons beyond my understanding) to the West bulletin, and we were treated to Mary's informative yet useless trailer for tonight's edition of Meridian Tonight West . The last we saw of Mary was her handing over to the weather, after which we were switched back to the South bulletin for the South weather, which had only intermittent sound. The weather stings were poorly timed as well. Once the weather was over, Carolyn was back, in silent mode of course, and I'm willing to bet that it wasn't an apology that was coming out of her mouth!

Isn't this *exactly* the sort of thing that we all knew would happen when the Meridian news operation was consolidated? Of course it is! Are ITV going to let Meridian do anything about it? Of course they aren't!
[/Rant]

Glad that's off my chest...

I've noticed flaws in the Lunchtime Bulletin too, during the headlines at the beginning of the Lunchtime News, there is always about three seconds before the presenter says anything and during the actual Meridian News it took Fred three seconds to start speaking. Also they keep running late, both Fred today and Carolyn Sym yesterday got cut off by London.

Fred said something like "From of all of us here go -" and then it went straight into the regional in/out title.

John

Remember, everybody - this is "the blueprint for ITV".

Merry Christmas...

Are the presenters for the short bulletins now working across more than one sub-region? TVF's very own Ian Axton appeared on UK Today trailing the SE edition of Meridian Tonight, but didn't he used to be on the South edition?

*cough* West/Thames Valley

I have to say I'm not at all surprised by the on going technical imperfections. Understandable that there will be a few gremlins at first when they've just moved into a new centre, with new technology. However, I imagine we'll be putting up with this forever now.



I'd imagine that'll be the way things work from now on, presenters and reporters going where they're needed. Save's ITV more money I suppose.

If they're all in the same building, then yes, I'm sure they'll cover for which ever sub-region needs help.

Ian will have done the piece to London this afternoon because Phil's out of the office in rural Kent (see Sean's post on previous page).

I thought it was rather poor that they re-ran that weeks-old report on ugly turkeys on tonight's Meridian News [South] (and without acknowledging that they were revisiting the story).

Did the same package feature on all sub-regions again tonight?

I had already seen the report (or a version of it) on London Today, the ITV News Channel AND Meridian Tonight ages ago.

Also, a minor point but it was poor that the story about inaccurate train times information on the National Rail website on the South edition was illustrated with picture from Kent of a South Eastern Trains service passing a Eurostar. A minor point that wouldn't be noticed by most people, but nevertheless a dilution of the individuality of each of the three news services. These little points all add up and they don't inspire confidence.

The property agent is Sibley Pares (a local company), although there is a property management company called 'Brown Harknett' involved. I've looked on both of their websites and there appears to be no mention of the property.

I'm off until New Year but may try to get some 'photos for you - so much for staying away from work this holiday

Does anyone else think that this shot - with the yellow square under the DOG - looks very poor?
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/meridian_gareth.jpg
Surely they could have done better than that?

It's pretty dire, just like everything else about poor Meridian at the moment.

To be fair, it's not just Meridian who are guilty of that.

It happens regularly on all the stations with the new layout studio and a DOG.

There simply aren't that many combinations of positions for blue and yellow on the screen.

Yes, that is pretty bad, but in the old layout, you could hardly see the blue squares on the DOG sometimes, they were blending in with the studio background.

John