Reporting Scotland & Scotland Today

For the first time in a very long time, I am back in my native Central Scotland and thus able to watch Scotland Today and Reporting Scotland for several nights consecutively.

I will start a seperate thread later on about my observations of British TV news in particular, but here's a few comments about the Scottish programmes.

Absolutely NO interaction at all on screen between Jackie Bird and David Robertson. It is very noticeable.

Sarah Heaney, Nick Dixon and the entire purposefuleness of Lunchtime Scotland Today is lost on me totally. It is a really dreadful programme and should be binned immediately.

The stand-up style of both bulletins is terrible and both sets are dire.

Shereen remains the biggest asset that Scotland Today has. Her accent has, however, over the last two years become greatly more "Glesga'" and coarse. However, she is still great and I think connects well with the viewers, much more than anyone else does.

Why does the Sportscaster on Scotland Today, Raman Bhardwaj, persist in SHOUTING when he is presenting to camera. I watched him make a big thing the other day of unclicking the lid from his pen and snapping it back on, and then throwing his script and pen onto the "coffe table" in an effort to look cool. It was just cringeworthy.

Why does the STV news team report from the North of Scotland?????

Sigh..............lots more questions to add later.

More to the point - why are they needing a Scot Today reporter there at all??? The Grampian reporter is more than capable of doing this story. I dont imagine if the tables were turned that Grampian would have a reporter covering a story it wanted to run with if ther was an STV reporter also there?

And surely the mic logo could have been removed for this story tonight!!

I was watching Reporting Scotland a few weeks ago with Sally Magnusson. I think she's really good. She should be promoted to BBC National News e.g. the 1, 6 or 10 O' Clock News.

Sally, of course used to be national - she did Breakfast Time, then Breakfast News for about 10 years, and she may have, although I am not sure have done the odd One/Six.

Thanks. I didn't know that. It sounds a bit strange though! Most Newsreaders start by presenting Regional News and get promoted to National News e.g. Fiona Bruce who used to present on Newsroom South East (now called BBC London News) and Sophie Raworth who used to present Look North) not the other way round.

She was probably with BBC Scotland before going to the network news in London, and then moved back to Glasgow. A bit like Border's Fiona Armstrong who started out at Border, then went to ITN in London, and then back to Border in the mid - nineties.

I don't believe Sally was - i think she was at The Scotsman before moving to BBC South-East, then to BBC News.

More info here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/tvfactual/sallymagnusson.shtml

I was just thinking that some of you kind folk maybe able to help me with something, which I have posted else where;




Is there any chance of some of the Scottish TV Buildings please?

If yes, can you please PM me for further details..

Thank you for your time.

Correct. Oban was part of Strathclyde. Fort William is covered by STV because the Nevis range blanks out Grampian signals in that area. This fact was overlooked by North of Scotland TV in 1991 when they were bidding to take over the Grampian franchise in the infamous franchise auction. They organised a tour of the Grampian area to announce their plans for it, if successful, and one of the stops was at Fort William. Only a tiny audience turned up to attend the meeting, and after NSTV had given their spiels, a local councilor pointed out that the trip had been fruitless, as Grampian didn't cover Fort William, and the only way that it could be picked up was by moving Ben Nevis!

Another oddity is in the Western Isles where almost all islands are served by Grampian, the exception being Barra which receives STV.

Good to see the wonderful people of Paisley living up to their reputation. Mike Edwards was trying to do a live link to Scotland Today about the recent stabbings (5 people stabbed, one person arrested and charged in connection, therefore sod all else we can say about it) and had a shower of neds (chavs for those of you down south) shouting all over it. It included the classic moment when he said "The man will appear at Paisley Sheriff Court on Monday" which was responded to with "Paisley Sheriff Court is full of dafties", presumably from someone who knows it quite well. He did plough on heroically, although he was stumbling over the odd word here and there, probably because he couldn't hear himself.

Could have been worse I suppose - there wasn't any swearing, or anything that could have had them hauled up for Contempt of Court.

Is it not about time something was done to stop idiots wrecking live broadcasts though? I suppose the only thing you could do is arrange a bouncer to drag people away, or get a police presence, but both would presumably cost cheap old SMG some money. Broadcasters do need to do something though. The day people just jumped around in the background when a TV camera is about is over, and anything could happen next.

Sounded like the exact same thing was going to have during the ITV news there during the lady in the lake report - thankfully the ned was slightly further away this time, or ITV hired people to get rid of them.