Papal resignation & conclave coverage

The person doing the translating clearly wasn't English. I doubt they will have learnt the Lord's Prayer in any language other than their own (if at all).

World News Today on BBC4 wasn't much better - they're just horribly intrusive graphics thanks to the red opaque colouring. The graphics should add to the coverage, not detract from it.

I started off with the Six O'Clock News, then went to the BBC News Channel but settled on Sky News for the actual announcement/introduction of the new Pope.

I found the BBC coverage really distracting. The lower thirds took up far too much of the screen - blocking the action most of the time like Brekkie said. The SD picture quality was pretty poor, probably worsened by the fact there were so many people in St Peter's Square, as digital compression artifacts were really noticeable. I detest the new live/local time bug in the top left corner, which was clearly coming from BBC World. It kept animating every few seconds and was very, very distracting. And lastly Jon Sopel spent most of the time wittering on over the pictures and not letting viewers soak up the atmosphere.

I thought Sky News was much better - HD pictures which were pin-sharp; very unobtrusive graphics which allowed viewers to see much more action than did the BBC's; and the presenter was far less excitable than Jon Sopel and as such was much easier to watch/listen to. Usually I would always stay with the BBC for such occasions, but their coverage just didn't cut it for me tonight. I have to say I'm worried about the relaunch next week, mainly because of the graphics. There's nothing worse than animating graphics and I sincerely hope astons and bugs are not going to be whizzing all over the place from next week.

The Sky News translator managed it all just fine and she didn't sound English either.

Some news coverage of the bla---white smoke rising.

Al Jazeera

CNN

Fox

Out of those 3 clips, AJ captured the atmosphere so much better than Fox or CNN. The sound of the crowd was there all along rather than just faded up as an afterthought. I don't know if this was a fluke of where their presenter was or whether that was coming in on the Vatican TV feed.

I did hear a murmur that Sky jumped the gun and briefly announced the wrong Cardinal's name when the announcement was made - the other Argentinian, Sandri. One of the news agencies definately did make that mistake

Found myself flicking between Sky and CNN but ended up sticking with Sky for the HD pictures and unobtrusive graphics. Colin Brazier was very good at just keeping quiet and letting the pictures and the sound tell the story.

Have watched a good bit of CNN the last few days and was left distinctly unimpressed by the big new singing for their U.S network, Chris Cuomo. I guess he is still new to rolling breaking news coverage but I thought he really struggled at times. There was also some rather bizarre parts of the coverage where they would have one guest with two presenters, Cuomo and Anderson Cooper, sitting either side of the guest asking questions - felt very awkward indeed. Not a huge amount of on screen chemistry between Cuomo and Cooper either (none in fact).

I don't remember Sky jumping the gun on the name. But they did jump the gun on the smoke with the strap saying no pope was elected. Although they quickly faded it out and put the right one on.

Well I can assure you that knowing the Lord's Prayer word for word for a particular denomination's version is not considered vital for a translator.