The Newsroom

BBC News (UK) presentation - Reith launch onwards

From Monday 15th July 2019 (July 2019)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
CM
cmthwtv
Brilliant timing - BBC News at Ten doing an ITV tonight and starting 2 minutes late and the NC still incredibly manages to time a 74 second countdown to lead into it.

The BBC News at Ten has been very tardy lately rather than being guaranteed a bang on 10:00 start like normal

BBC News at When. Maybe I should send in an email to complain.


Be careful. They might replace Huw with a text-to-speech bot as part of budget cuts.
SW
Steve Williams
BBC News at When. Maybe I should send in an email to complain.


I would hope that people appreciate the difference between the news starting a minute or two late because the programme before it was a bit longer than an hour, and it starting half an hour late because they wanted to show another programme completely, as ITV used to do.

There are loads of examples on YouTube of the BBC news in the past starting a minute or two past nine, especially as in the seventies and eighties programme lengths would be a bit flexible (hence how Fawlty Towers has episodes ranging from thirty to nearly forty minutes) and they would try and get BBC1 and BBC2 starting at the same time as well.

I never understood the complaints when ITV News at Ten used to start a few minutes past the hour. There's a load of churn at ten o'clock and people will be switching over from other channels, or will have nipped to the toilet or to make a cup of tea after the previous programme. The number of people sitting there at ten o'clock on the dot is very small, and it's different from breakfast where if things are a bit late it genuinely inconveniences people because they have a very short window where they expect to see things and if they're not there it sends their schedule awry. That's not the case at ten at night. I think it trivialises the legitimate complaints about News at When - when ITV would just shove it back half an hour to make way for a Harry Potter film or something else that could go at any time on any night - to obsess about a minute or two's difference.

In addition, of course, the Beeb are currently trying to put together a schedule with some new stuff in, which for obvious reasons is going to be a bit haphazard, and they're relying on imports, which work to different durations than a BBC programme would, or stuff that's been online, where they don't pay much attention to running times, or stuff made under lockdown which is often shorter than usual as that's all that can be made. It would be easy for BBC1 to just show a load of repeats like ITV where they know how long it all lasts and it's easy to schedule. But they're trying their hardest to get new content, any new content on. If the weird running times mean the news starts a minute or two late, so be it. Rather that than another repeat of Mrs Brown.
AN
Andrew Founding member
I never understood the complaints when ITV News at Ten used to start a few minutes past the hour.

If I had a pound for every time it is complained about on here when ITV do start a few minutes after ten though, I'd have a lot of money

They do it for advertising reasons of course, so the 9:56 ad break can air at 10:00 and come out of the '10-11pm' allowance and attract higher rates being next to the 9pm drama, but it doesn't stop it getting mentioned frequently

It's a myth that proper old school News at Ten with Trevor always started bang on Ten either

It is true you could literally set your watch by the BBC News at Ten, so you shouldn't complain too much when it was brought up in a factual observation manner.

Of course ITV can run a full length ad break at 10, and Tom will still start reading the top story before Huw does!
CM
cmthwtv
Maybe they could make some cuts in the headline sequence rather than regional services Wink
Ian of old and GeekyJames gave kudos
RN
Rolling News
Brilliant timing - BBC News at Ten doing an ITV tonight and starting 2 minutes late and the NC still incredibly manages to time a 74 second countdown to lead into it.

The BBC News at Ten has been very tardy lately rather than being guaranteed a bang on 10:00 start like normal

BBC News at When. Maybe I should send in an email to complain.

I was joking 🙃
JW
JamesWorldNews
And let's not forget, it's a well-known fact in television circles that both BBC and ITV dispensed with on-screen clocks leading-into the news because of the incessant complaints on this forum about the late starts of the late evening news in particular.

Channel controllers thought they could throw us off the scent by removing the clocks and we'd never notice a few minutes lateness here and there.

Alas, they forgot our secret weapon which was soon to throw a spanner in their works: Tumbly and his stopwatch. He almost single-handedly forced the media bosses to admit that News at Ten was actually News at Three Minutes Past Ten.......

Of course, some of our newer members won't be aware of this TVF scoop.
PE
PurpleEquinox
Anybody else appreciate that BBC News still supports those with a 4:3 aspect? You can still clearly see everything - nothing is cut off! How long this will last I don’t know.
Rolling News and Custard56 gave kudos
CM
cmthwtv
Pol Live taken on the NC after Chancellor's statement
JF
JF World News
Pol Live taken on the NC after Chancellor's statement

That normal after the Budget or Spring/Summer Statement
GH
Ghost
At the end of the 5am hour today, there was no proper close, they simply went straight to the weather after the Johnny Depp report. Has this happened before?
JW
JamesWorldNews
Ghost posted:
At the end of the 5am hour today, there was no proper close, they simply went straight to the weather after the Johnny Depp report. Has this happened before?


Yes. When they are o.o.t.

And it used to be the standard closing many years ago.
RN
Rolling News
NC simulcasting from C with Lucy Hockings from 12pm?

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