Now

Has anyone else noticed this?

Why does nearly every news story have to start with the word "Now"?

It started with one or two of the News 24 presenters, but has rapidly spread to all the presenters on all the bulletins on all the channels.

It's really hacking me off.

Am I alone, or are others equally annoyed by it?

YES! FINALLY someone else has admitted to being annoyed by this! I hate it. Somebody PLEASE buy these presenters a truckload of thesauruses (or is it thesaurii?) for Christmas!

Andrea Catherwood used to do it frequently on ITV News - it really grates on me

And Katie Derham. Coupled with her affected chatty deliverance and entire body tossing about like a 1987 Sealink ferry coming in to Holyhead, it makes for a thoroughly grating experience.

You don't know me - stop being so bloody informal.

Oh well, I guess you're not a fan.
She doesn't know me either but I'd far rather watch and listen to her present the news than any other newsreader.

I will concede that the word 'now' does feature fairly frequently in her bulletins (though your other criticisms make me wonder how long it has been since you last saw her).
I'm curious to know if most of them are in the script being read from the autocue or if they're mainly ad-libbed.

Okay, I exaggerated somewhat , but I still find her overly convivial deliverance irksome.

I suspect they're entirely ad-libbed. Given the professionalism of people of this calibre, I'd imagine they just scan the script beforehand and adjust the opening and closing accordingly (not that they don't anyway, but no doubt they do with with reference to intended 'tone' aswell).

I like Katie's sweet nature, she seems to be the only one who can elicit a genuine smile from Mark Austin at the end of the Evening News (on the unfortunately rare occasions that she co-presents that bulletin).

I think you're right about occurrences of 'now' being (largely) ad-libbed. I noticed the other day that the word tends to crop up in the body of the introduction and sign-off so, though the sense is different, it does sometimes feel as if it is being overused.

"Now, so now we'll leave you with some images of the star-studded event as captured by Now magazine. For now at least, bye for now"

*waves biro vigourously* .

Well yes, if that sentence were ever to be uttered it would be an extreme example of overusing the word 'now'

Yes. Yes it would.

It really irritates me when I see it used as the first word of a newspaper headline. It's that Daily Mail type exasperation at the modern world.

I think you are all getting unnecessarily excited/annoyed about something very trivial.

"Now" is a legitimate word in the English language and has its place in everyday conversation. In news broadcasts it serves to seperate one item from another as an easy colloquial transition.

I have tried looking out for excessive use of the word in news broadcasts since this thread started, and can't say I have noticed its use anywhere that was particularly out of context.

Now, let's move on to something more important!