The Newsroom

Northern Ireland news thread

(July 2006)

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CO
Colm
Just catching up with the week's news back home via the UTV website - and noticed that on Monday's programme, sports presenter Graham Little was co-host on the features, and even did the weather... nice to see actually.

Did anyone else catch this?
Last edited by Colm on 15 November 2009 1:50pm - 2 times in total
CO
Colm
Caught up on the week's developments on UTV Live - interesting to see yesterday's Live at Six was double-headed by Lynda and Tina - very rare to see two female anchors on the main bulletin. I know Newsline has done this before in the past (possibly Rose and Donna). Obviously there isn't a third choice of male presenter after Paul and Fearghal...

Are many of the reporters on holiday at the moment? Over the past few weeks I haven't seen Kate and Pamela, reporters such as Letitia Gwynne and Niall Donnelly seem to be away and reports from Derry are dispatched by George Jackson, who has done freelancing for UTV from the North West, instead of Mark McFadden.

Speaking of Stroke City... well done to the Candystripes in the UEFA Cup! Good to see Logie was sent on an OB (live?) to the Brandywell on Thursday night, and Neil getting on camera Smile Just as strange seeing Gary Gillespie doing a piece-to-camera on Monday night. Whatever next, a PTC from John Flack? Smile

Good job Michelle on your report on the survery on Ulster attitudes to the LGBT community the other night - even if you had to interview a minister to express his archaic and disgusting opinions your piece was wonderful, positive and really reflected national opinion I thought.

Also, well done to Insight acting editor and former UTV Live and Belfast Tele reporter Darwin Templeton on becoming editor of the News Letter.
SC
SCBNI
Col posted:
Just catching up with the week's news back home via the UTV website - and noticed that on Monday's programme, sports presenter Graham Little was co-host on the features, and even did the weather... nice to see actually.

Did anyone else catch this?


Certainly did Col, was quite surprised to see him on the sofa actually! Logie got a little dig in later on when he was saying "look where you are now", laughing at the fact that he had stepped up from the sports desk!

With regards to presenters on holiday, Fearghal and Tina have been presenting for what seems like ages, pretty much all of July. Fearghal only went on holiday recently and Lynda came back to work a few weeks ago. Until he went it had been him and Lynda presenting. On the sofa, Pamela hasn't been around since just after the 12th and Frank too only went on holiday recently. As far as I'm aware this week was Graham's first go at presenting the features.

Is Graham still just a sports presenter though? Recently he has been doing a lot more features reports rather than just sports. Is he branching out? Or is this just because he is freelance now?
CO
Colm
I didn't know Graham had been doing more stuff for features, although I knew that since Neil Brittain moved to the sports department last November that Graham's reporting and presenting for the sports desk had diminished slightly. Then again, he might have been filming that Little Goes Large documentary.

Perhaps he is doing more features to cover for the usual features reporters who are off (Frank, Pamela... and does Sue Corbett still do reports for the features desk?). I remember once seeing him doing a non-sport report shortly after he joined UTV Live about birds which ended up with his jacket appearing to be bird-dropped on... Smile

I've also noticed that Carol McAllister, who anytime I saw UTV Live at home was mainly covering features, has also been reporting for the main news bulletin the past few weeks, but it's usually part of the internship that graduates from the University of Ulster Newspaper Journalism course undertake that their duties in the UTV newsroom are rotated - they will spend time reporting for UTV Internet, they will spend time reporting for the features team and they will spend time reporting on news. That's what previous internees who did the course (Sarah Henry in 2002, Neil Brittain in 2003, Michelle Napier in 2004 and Carol McAllister in 2005) have done since they started at UTV.
WH
whiteside2005
Noticed on Friday evening they where using the old look for UTV live sport on the plasma instead on the usual look. Only for course the example below should be the sport look, maybe stevieB could post a capture Laughing

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c259/whiteside2005/bulletin-2a.jpg
PE
peterrocket Founding member
Col posted:
I didn't know Graham had been doing more stuff for features, although I knew that since Neil Brittain moved to the sports department last November that Graham's reporting and presenting for the sports desk had diminished slightly. Then again, he might have been filming that Little Goes Large documentary.


Graham has moved into freelance so has effectively "left" UTV which enables him to now work on other channels, such as Setanta, which was part of his main decision for the move so he can accept the offer of work he's been given.
SC
SCBNI
whiteside2005 posted:
maybe stevieB could post a capture Laughing


Certainly...

http://www.utvtoday.co.uk/images/utvsport.jpg

The side bars are now officially gone. The sport side bar was the last one remaining and now that they are using this, it means they have now moved to using the plasmas for the whole bulletin. About time really, they were totally pointless before that!
WH
whiteside2005
StevieB posted:
whiteside2005 posted:
maybe stevieB could post a capture Laughing


Certainly...

http://www.utvtoday.co.uk/images/utvsport.jpg

The side bars are now officially gone. The sport side bar was the last one remaining and now that they are using this, it means they have now moved to using the plasmas for the whole bulletin. About time really, they were totally pointless before that!


Knew we could rely on you stevie!!!
CO
Colm
Nice one for Graham, a shame for UTV though as he was one of the better reporters in the UTV Live newsroom I thought.

A bit similar to the situation in Tyne Tees land with Roger Tames, although he is now freelance he still contributes through hosting Soccer Night.
PE
peterrocket Founding member
There's also rumours about UTV losing NW200 rights to the BBC, hardly surprising. I think the offer is live from BBC where as UTV can only make a highlights package even though the coverage is all made live with OB trucks and beamed back to Havelock for web streaming.
CO
Colm
That would leave UTV with... hardly anything regards local sport.
TI
tightrope78
Graham Little obviously has a good PR machine behind him. There have been at least two seperate articles about him in the NI press recently. There was a rather cringe worthy interview in the Belfast Telegraph the other week where he 'opened his heart' about his girlfriend and family. And I saw an article in the NI edition of the Daily Mirror the other week which was about a group of Ulster lads that had travelled to the World Cup and Graham was one of them, though there was no mention that he was a tv presenter in the article.

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