RTÉ News

I'm not sure if it is conventional or appropriate to post about television news from outside the UK, but I see that there have been posts about RTÉ before so....

Essentially I'd be really interested in hearing the opinions of those from outside Ireland about the presentation of our national broadcaster RTÉ's television news.

Here is a link to a clip of our main 'Six-One' news bulletin at 6 o'clock, so-called because the Angelus bells are rung for 70 seconds or so before the news. Indeed it's the only main news bulletin in Europe that starts at this time. It features the standard dual-presenter format that most stations use for early evening:

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2032507.smil

Anyway, RTÉ News is held in high regard in terms of its coverage, impartiality etc & is on a par with the BBC - however for the few that are interested in this country in televison presentation, this aspect of their bulletins is quite a different story.
Renouned for dodgy production values, the station's news problems vary from dubious studio set design to woeful VT cueing to crude title bars to mis-cues etc etc etc.

Also, here's our main Nine O'Clock bulletin with RTÉ's equivalant to Anna Ford, Anne Doyle. It's still on at 9 & more popular than ever thanks to the BBC's generous decision to move to Ten a couple of years back; we're cashing in big-time

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2033769.smil

What do you make of the set, intro sequence etc? - it was newly launched in Sept of 2003. Thankfully still broadcast in 4:3, the bulletins also still feature picture inserts alongside the presenter which the BBC and many others have done away with.

I tried to watch the Opening Titles of the RTÉ News at 9, but as I only have 56k it did this poorly, but the Audio isn't a problem, all I can say is that the Theme tune reminds me of the pre-1999 BBC Nine O'Clock News theme.

Has anyone got the titles to download by any chance?

Alas I don't know of any downloads available - just the Real Player streams.
I do have a few stills though:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y37/RTE1TV/Wide2.jpg

Hope to have some more shortly.

I see what you mean about the intro being similar to the older BBC orchestral one - new realised til now . That trumpety blast at the start is startlingly similar!

The 'cream scheme' of the set, returning to solid elements as opposed to cycloramas and CG etc, was in direct response to the BBC's return to 'reality' with traditional set elements in 1999. We tend to come straggling behind the BBC copying them to a tee in most stuff we do - although not too badly considering we're up against the biggest and best broadcaster in the world.

Unfortunately, not quite the attention paid by other Bristish stations is lavished on RTÉ News - the 'mahogany' features appear not to be veneer, rather they're clad in an even falser looking material.
The plazma in-studio monitor used for satellite link-ups etc in true plaza tradition has the RTÉ News graphic permanently ingrained in it which looks awful with lightish pictures on it - and the 4:3 images it displays are crudely stretched to the 16:9 format which is really astonishingly amateurish for a state broadcaster.

Just for a laugh, here's a big feck-up I was recently told about - newsreader Aengus Mac Grianna (he's bad at the best of times) making a mess of the IRA bank robbery story - it's just after the headlines and intro sequence:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0119/1news/1news56.smil

(Again sorry if you can't see it, but you can hear it anyway )

I regularly watch RTE News online, and have done so when I've been in Ireland. It is a good service, but I notice it is heavily focused on domestic issues, and less on international stories.

Who is the main anchor of the One O'Clock News ? I notice Aengus MacGrianna and John Finnerty present it a lot - do they share the duty. I believe Eileen Dunne used to do it, but she shares the Nine with Anne Doyle now, I think.

And what is RTE's flagship programme - is it the Six One with Bryan Dobson and Una O' Hagan, or the Nine O'Clock News ?

Yes RTÉ News is quite domestically oriented - but that comes from the nature of the news market here. 75% of the population recieve the BBC, and 65-70% UTV/ITV & Ch4 - all providing excellent international coverage. Considering RTÉ's comparitively limited resources, it is quite acceptable for it to be more home-based.

Yes One O'Clock is juggled around a lot alright between newsreaders. John Finnerty is the most regualar, with Aengus second, and others filling in when required too. London Editor Brian O'Connell presented it for quite a while a few years back but I doubt his strong London accent went down too well...

As for the flagship - good question. Everything is aimed towards Six One, it being 55 mins long, and it does feature greater anaylsis with in-studio interviews and satellite link-ups etc, as well as a 'close-up' investigative report. It also features a substantial sports segment.

Nine by contrast is watched by more people, attaining a significant audience of circa 600,000-650,000 on average; Six One achieves around 500,000.
Nine, as with the BBC's Ten, and Ch4's 7 news, has the added benefit of wrapping up and closing the days events with some re-edited reports and sat link-ups, but most of it is a churning out of Six One's content.

All in all, Six One is probably considered the flagship, especially with veteran newsreader Bryan Dobson and Una O'Hagn too (who seems to have appeared from nowhere into stardom about 7 years ago)

Anne Doyle on Nine is a big draw there too however. A big change has happened recently with Anne starting to do weekends and Mon-Wed, with Dunne taking over for the rest & the other weekend.
I believe this is beacuse Anne has simply moved to the country, and splits her time between there and Dublin - as far as I know.
Dunne also takes over during the summer.


Presentation is its big problem in my view - it has good coverage of Irish & British news, and good investigative journalism as you probably know with the banking scandals etc, but the deliverance of the news is a different ball-game and frankly it still has to get a grasp of the fact that it's working with the medium of television, not radio.

It does well, but could do a lot better.

The worst example being, of course RTE News' virtual look from the mid-1990s. The entire look was copied lock, stock, and barrel - studio, astons, windows, the lot - from the BBC's virtual look. You can see some pictures of this at The TV Room and compare it to the BBC's - it was virtually identical. (Incidently the RTE News logo from this era, dropped in 1997, is STILL used for Oireachtas Report!!! (the parliamentary review programme). Just shows what priority RTE gives to parliamentary proceedings...

Graphics wise this current look is a bit less flashy and more simplistic than the previous look. RTE News seem to be going for a bit of corporate image, in that Prime Time and The Week In Politics now use the same astons.

As for the flagship, RTE have always confused me, in that Six One is quite clearly the flagship as far as RTE News and Currenf Affairs are concerned. But RTE Presentation have always introduced the Nine as "The main evening news" and Six-One as "The early evening news", as if the Nine were the more important...

Ah yes, the green machine

Some images here from the actual designer's site:

http://indigo.ie/~alanf/rtenews-4.jpg

http://indigo.ie/~alanf/rtenews-3.jpg

http://indigo.ie/~alanf/rtenews-2.jpg

Those were the days
Yes, thought I was the only one who noticed the Week in Politics graphic too - I've a feeling I've spoken to you about this before on another site rdd . It is extraordinary it survived up until the beginning of 2005.
However a rather snazzy new intro for it was launched just a couple of months back - you wouldn't recognise it!

As for the current news look - all in all I like it. The deep greens in the graphics are lovely, although I think the title astons are appalling; they look crude and unfinished with that white bar, and the bold blue text is not pleasant.

The set can look very well, especially in afternoon bulletins for some reason - the depth of the colours in the monitor unit behind the presenter is fantastic, and the picture resolution from those 5 cameras is superb. It was the same with the old 2000 set, the afternoon 'stand-ups' always looked fantastic for some reason...

For the main bulletins, the cream floor is often covered in scuffmarks in the wide opening and closing shots and microphone wires are constantly evident dangling down from under the desk - and the big box units holding equipment behind the desk are also clumsily evident.

The streamlined set looks very well overall though, although the way the lower wall of the set often comes into view in the standard presenter mid-shot is clumsy. Also the lighting is very bright - suppose one of the most common complaints about RTÉ News, and the station's output in general. It's particularly harsh over the in-studio monitor as can be seen in the above pic.
As the TV Room notes, it was designed by Bernadette Gaskin who's very good. She designed the very last and very snazzy set for Crimeline a couple of years back before it was axed - think she did the big new Studio 4 Kenny Live set in 1995 as well but I'm not sure, and various other sophisticated looking programmes.

Here's a tighter than ususal mid-shot of Una, the graphic is nice and streamlined - the green strip to the left usually layers over the image in a transparent fashion.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y37/RTE1TV/Una.jpg

I personally prefer to have more of the presenter in the shot so that they equal the size of the graphic, rather than have the graphic almost looming alongside like in this image. Having the shoulders a little further up makes all the difference in making the newsreader more dominant.

As for the late-night bulletin on Fridays - what is going on?? This bulletin features reports as it's on after The Late Late Show, but the astons are the worst you'll ever see, and the colour is completely off compared with the standard astons.
Also there's a black line at the bottom of the screen for some reason as if the whole image has been shoved up an inch & it's nothing to do with aspect ratio. The lighting's also incredibly harsh.
As far as I know, these bulletins now come from the SOCR studio, the 'single-operator control room'.
But Friday is by far the worst - it's just appalling for a state broadcaster - so amateurish.

Don't get me started on Prime Time's set - it is just disgraceful. I'm not sure what you mean by the corporate look - now Newsnight is corporate, Prime Time is just a shambles, and again the use of red astons as per The Week in Politics is a blatent rip-off from the BBC.

To give the station some credit, the picture quality from the Newsroom (Studio 3) cameras is second to none - the best your're going to get this side of HD, just superb resolution and colour fidelity.

I've read that RTÉ started broadcasting some programmes and films in widescreen recently and that it's only available on digital and cable. Is that true or what's the story with the transition to widescreen?

On another point, I would agree that at times, RTÉ productions can be of very poor quality. If you look back to the four eurovision song contests of 1993, 94, 95 and 97, they were all very well produced especially 1995 (although the set was a bit too dark). Since then, the quality of RTÉ's productions has been sliding slowly downhill and unfortunately continues to do so today - for example 'you're a star'. I have never seen such messy and sloppy camera work from RTÉ. If you look at 'the late late show' you'll see that the camera work here is also very bad, especially during musical acts. However the camera work on shows such as 'the afternoon show' or 'tubridy tonight' tends to be quite good.

So in general, there are a lot of inconsistencies in RTÉ's broadcasting of late and I think that a little bit more effort and uniformity wouldn't go astray.

I absolutely abhor the current look of RTE TV News. When the set was shown on-screen for the first time in September 2003, my jaw dropped in astonishment. It was as if we had turned the clock back about twenty years. I only hope that Autumn 2005 will see the introduction of a new set. BBC and ITV news programmes now leave RTE way way behind presentation-wise. Even TV 3 looks so much more impressive.

RTE News and Current Affairs has always been a bit of a mess when it comes to designing sets and graphics for some reason. The only notable exception would have been the 2000-2003 look. At times, it did indeed look impressive. It is so frustrating though. There's roughly 2.5 hours of programming a day coming from that set. It needs to look good.

I feel sorry for the presenters at the moment working off that set. It's just so crap and amateurish. It's like some dreadful local news set from the 1980s - cardboard city. And don't the scuff marks on the floor really set things off!!

As you say 'RTE 1', the quality of output from that SOCR is appalling, giving the overall effect of a news programme produced by a small local community TV channel. And what about the third set they have alongside the main RTE ONE control room - in this day and age, for early and late night bulletins to be broadcast from a broom cupboard studio, with the shadow of the presenter showing on the set...and no video reports...well, need I say more? The quality of the astons produced from that kit is dreadful...not to mention the less than smooth fading on/off screen!!

They did brag a bit in the original press release IIRC about the astons/graphics being generated by gear produced in-house. As if the end result is something to be proud of. Awful!!

On the subject of trying to hide cables - yeah, they don't half make it obvious. Ever noticed that cream panel that runs along the floor in front of the desk? It's not always there for some reason.

The Week In Politics is the only other programme that makes use of the news studio/set these days as far as I can see. Do you remember the days (well up until about 1997) when most sports programmes used the news set - such as Sports Stadium? They would just change the background lighting and stick a panel of some sort on front of the main desk. The Beat Box on a Sunday morning used it too for ages.

Ronan - on your point about Oireachtas Report - they finally ditched that logo a few weeks back. Oireachtas Report now has a new look. I've only seen the titles once...but my first impression was that they were quite good. However, they still don't use astons on that programme.

At last! - finally someone that acknowledges the woeful nature of late night bulletins! I thought it was just me - everyone else just says I'm a crank (true anyway)
Yes it looks exactly like the output of a community channel - the shadows on the afternoon ones beggar belief in this day and age, indeed I think they're still occassionally in use for the late nights too. A media student could produce better in their bedroom with a camcorder and a desk lamp....

And what is with the astons - the top blue and bottom white bars don't even allign at the right of the screen, and the text on the bars doesn't even fit onto them!
And the RTÉ News banner at the top only comes on screen when the astons are faded on! It's neither generated by Pres or the SOCR. And as said before, the blue used is a nasty bright blue and doesn't even match the standard colour... And as for the crude blasting onto screen of the opening titles and the appallingly crass and sharp cuts into and out of the reports - just unbelievable!

Is that what the silver bar in front of the newsroom desk is for - for hiding wires - always wondered that! Yes it comes and goes as it pleases But drooping wires are always always in shot when interviewing a guest on the left of the desk on Six One & Nine. The wide shot of Presenter and Guest always has wires trailing down to the floor. Occasionally you even see the mic socket boxes with the XLRs all lined up in it! And what is with the use of those pathetic poley desk mics for guests and sports presenters that come creeping into shot? Why don't they have a double lapel mic like everyone else? Or even the use of smaller desk mics as a next-best solution - even the set in 1997-2000 used smaller mics than these!

Did you ever notice the most appalling thing on the Week in Politics: when the large 'mahogany' set unit behind the desk is removed for that programme (the yoke with the big square in the middle used for chromakey), the upper part of the cream set has a huge burn/lightdamaged patch on it caused by the heat of the lighting units attached to the back of the big wooden yoke! It went on for weeks with this being evident, it's about a square metre of damage, but they've starting framing on T Week I P now so that the upper part of the set is out of shot....

Overall though I quite like the set - something of a soft spot for crisp clean lines and angular shapes....but I think the desk is terrible as well as the large strips of metal surrounding the in-studio monitor which are far too large. And lighting lighting lighting...

I would like to see all of RTÉ's news and current affairs output completely regularised, using a deep green as a colour base for all graphics and set highlights. I think the newsroom is too small and needs enlarging - there's only so much you can do with such a small space.
Quality real materials need to be used, natural timbers, glass, high quality metals. I also find carpet looks especially good in newsrooms, very disappointed when the BBC took that rich red one out a couple of years back
As you say - this newsroom is in use for a substantial part of the day, every day, for 3 years on average. It deserves better treatment.

Have to stay up late some night and see...

Its not for nothing that one Irish politican once called the programme "for drunks and insomniacs"... something badly needs to be done about parliamentary coverage. At least now they have the morning coverage on RTE ONE and TG4 too.

I wonder if Anne Doyle has the same hairstyle she's had since she began hosted the Nine O'Clock News...

Speaking of all things RTE, have the plans to launch on SkyDigital in Northern Ireland been shelved?