Politics Show

Apart from the new theme music, did anyone see the cock up at the start of the show?

One of the 'BBC News' name captions appeared on screen briefly over Jon Sopel, followed by the 'Coming Up' VT speeding up mid flow.

(At this point BBC Birmingham opted out to Patrick Burns, so he could attempt to cover, but after his bit, they opted back to Jon Sopel mid sentence, then I guess BBC Birmingham had no choice but to take the 'Coming Up In London' bit, as it was a presenter I didn't recognise!)

How did it appear in the other regions?

Take a look http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=politics+show&filter=tv&page=1

God that studio's cluttered up now - are all those banners really necessary?

And having just looked at iPlayer (and picking the first one on there), Northern Ireland had the beginning with Jon Sopel, followed by the speeding VT and then back to Jon Sopel reading the first line again. Later when they did opt they had the old music, which sounded really weird straight after the new.

Speaking of the new music - ewww.

I just had a look at all of them on iPlayer. As already mentioned the West Midlands tried to cover for the problem in London by opting early and so missed Jon Sopel's second sans VT attempt at the national coming up sequence and ending up opting back for the London coming up sequence. Scotland did the same.

Strange situation with the subtitles on iPlayer for this programme too. Most regions have no subtitles at all and the few that did only had subtitles for the regional bits.

East Midlands managed the opt correctly.

music is no improvement

Taking a look at some of the openings(Thanks WT!), it looks a mess either way doesn't it?

How come Scotland & NI use a 20 sec ident while everyone else uses a 3 sec ident?
(Obviously this only applies to IPlayer!)

Yes, once they went for it and did the opt they couldn't really go back and do it again. Not only would it look worse to repeat themselves but there wouldn't have been time to decide to go again and reset back to the start.


I notice that Scotland's headline sequence is about 10 seconds longer than everyone elses - I assume that they're meant to cover Jon Sopel's link before the regional opt (in this case the bit about Peter Tatchell). So both the West Midlands and Scotland opted at the same time, but WM finished 10 seconds earlier.

I wonder if Scotland was cued too early and in the confusion Birmingham took that one instead?

Oh dear, that was a bit messy.

I wonder if they pre-recorded the headline sequence, then played out the wrong version? Might explain why Jon sort of started again.

Looks like they've had a few coloured dots lying around from the election graphics..