RTÉ News

The full Sunday Business Post article is below.
I'd give a cautious welcome to the news, as this is unchartered territory for RTÉ. In spite of dodgy news production, the RTÉ 1 in-house generated identity has generally had an illustrious past; for the most part it has been handled very professionally by the station. Bringing in an outside firm, and by that also implying from outside the country , will certainly result in a different perspective on things - hopefully for the better.

It will be very interesting to see what happens, as this will be the first major revamp in what is now an extraordinarily fashion-conscious country. Whatever about the public's thoughts on the matter, how RTÉ perceives itself will be implicit in the new identity created.

To come up with a new idendity for a national broadcaster's flagship channel is a major commission - I'd imagine Red Bee do not hold the account for RTÉ News also. It would also be putting too many eggs in one basket. News may well be another in-house job, though possibly with some freelance help this time round...


RTÉ hires former BBC agency for major TV overhaul

09 April 2006 By Catherine O’Mahony

RTE is preparing to rebrand its flagship television channel, RTE1, to give it a more distinct profile in the wake of recent schedule changes.

The broadcaster has hired British agency Red Bee Media – formerly part of the BBC and responsible for all its channel branding - to oversee a thorough overhaul of RTE1’s brand personality and look. It will be the first such exercise in five years.

The result, due by the end of the year, will be a new look RTE1 with a new portfolio of graphics. The rebrand will be designed to reflect the significant schedule changes that have taken place at the station since it secured a substantial licence fee increase in 2003.

That sum has allowed RTE to increase considerably the number of home-produced programmes on RTE1, including Tubridy Tonight, Show Me the Money and You’re a Star. Ratings have been rising steadily as a result.

In February, for example, the combined multichannel share for RTE was 42.4 per cent, two points up on February 2005, according to Nielsen figures.

The TV3 share was 11.1 per cent, down 0.5 per cent. Industry sources say RTE is particularly keen to emulate the success of its 2004 rebrand of Network 2 as RTE2, which took place after executives discovered a proportion of viewers did not know the channel was part of RTE.

Both of RTE’s key TV channels have been enjoying audience gains since then, but the RTE2 rebrand is credited with better differentiating the more youth-oriented station from its more ‘adult’ sister station.

Home-grown audience successes on RTE2 such as the Podge and Rodge Show have helped.

RTE2 has scored a 2.1 per cent gain in peak time audiences this year. RTE1 has gained a more modest 0.8 per cent in the period, and RTE management is keen to accelerate that growth.

The rebrand should also help to ensure that both channels continue to score well in their respective demographics.

Last week, for example, the Podge and Rodge Show had a 38 per cent audience share on Monday while Prime Time, showing at the same time on RTE1, still scored 34 per cent.

BBC Broadcast became Red Bee Media last October. The division had been sold following the BBC’s review of its commercial businesses. The company had been providing channel-branding and promotion services for the BBC since the broadcaster’s foundation.


© The Sunday Business Post

Great news indeed! But I would agree with Telefís, the last few RTÉ One packages have been of a very high standard (the previous one moreso than the current one) and I would hope that leaving the next rebrand in strangers' hands won't result in an inferior package. However it should be extremely interesting to see what Red Bee come up with!
I hope they get an outside company to do the news rebrand as well. Anything would be better than the current rubbish. Things seem to be looking up...!

Personally, I think they should find Dynamo. They are pretty solid, from what I have seen of TG4 (from footages on The TV Room)

What do you guys think?

Difficult to say really on such a major commission with established conventions and traditions - a tricky one to handle!


Sigh - a another major cock-up on Six One this evening. The whole opening sequence had to be ditched, including the headlines and titles.
The first indication of a problem was on the opening wide shot where the music bed failed to kick in, resulting in the camera deflating and zooming in on Bryan and Sharon in complete silence and their expressions getting increasingly nervous.
Then the camera stopped as is usual, resulting in a long static tight shot of both of them sitting there like gombeens not knowing what to do, shifting their papers, looking at their monitors, glancing at each other for at least five seconds - they didn't even know if their mics were live. The Bryan moved to get things rolling, sitting up and clearing his throat. He then turned sideways to speak across Sharon towards the side camera, before turning to his own camera which then switched to a shot of him over to one side without a picture window. The rest continues from here

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2132261.smil

Appalling direction given to the poor camera operator - a decision by the director about new shot composition should have been made in a flash.

Notice it's been cut out of that video as well. Well they've finally cottoned on that we're all eagle-eyed!

Its a pity they cut it out...i tuned this evening just as he was reading the headlines and needless to say, I knew there was something seriously wrong! Oh well, we shouldn't have to wait to long for another cock-up!!

If only some of them did read here - alas the only reason it was edited out was because it was at the very start of the bulletin. They never edit bulletins for the internet at all - just selecting a clean start and end point, as happend here. Just the clean in point today happened to be 10 seconds in!

Rather strange that the intro bed music and "The Six One News with X and X" as well as the headline sequence failed to work. Does this mean that the intro music and voice is on the same VT as the headline sequence, and not just played out seperately by the sound ops?

Often wondered who the V/Oer is who does the newscaster introduction. He must work in the Newsroom as they always have the correct line composed for whoever is presenting - often strange combinations like "Anne Doyle and Eileen Dunne" etc. Though the voice is a bit parochial, I think it works fairly well. At least that's one thing RTÉ News do properly - the line is always correctly written, the voice level is always consistant, as is the sound quality.

You know something is wrong when the shoulderbox is missing. The camera work is horrible. There's way too much headroom (those empty areas between the presenter's head and the upped end of the screen) on Dobson's shot in the beginning, as well as Sharon's. Perhaps it is more noticible without the shoulderbox.

I wonder if anyone had the original version on their computer?

I doubt it somehow - a pity as it was very funny

Yes, the old chestnut of headroom. RTÉ News are appalling on headroom, and it varies from camera op to camera op. The directors don't appear to care less about picture composition - it seems they leave it up to the camera ops entirely, which is fair enough up to a point, but they never step in even when things look awful. And the lack of consistency is equally poor - some nights Bryan is way up in the shot with his head skimming the top of the screen, while other days he's dumped down in a squat position in the lower portion of the frame, as we saw tonight. Similarly Doyle is often framed appallingly low in shot, and tonight on the Nine Eileen Dunne also had too much headroom. It's just embarrassing - I dread to think of the mess of 16:9 in September.

In the above case though I wouldn't blame the camera op for the lack of centering Bryan (though I would about the headroom), as the op didn't know if the vision mixer was going to bring up the picture window for the first story. If he had moved the frame to centre Bryan, just as the picture dissolved on screen, things would have be even worse. Hence he didn't move, and hence the awkward shot.

Rather it was up to the director to make a call on things, and they should have called out in a flash in the gallery to centre the shot and forget about the picture window for the first story. They didn't though, so we ended up with a mess so typical of RTÉ News directors. As far as I know, many of them are middle-aged women with little interest in production values, being more centred on formatting the content of bulletins than camera angles and picture composition.
It shows.

Nope... the SMIL file starts the actual video file at 1m23s. Open this URL in RealPlayer:

rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2006/0413/6news-119377-200.rm

Hee hee hee...brilliant!!! Thanks for finding that! Sheer akwardness at its best! They really should do an out-take programme all about RTÉ News...talk about entertainment! But for me, the best cock-up yet has to be when everything was going wrong one evening during the 6.01 and they cut to that eejit of a weatherman rehersing his bulletin...

By the looks of it the whole opening VT failed. Chances are the opening VT has the music, graphics and headline pics and v/o all in one to keep things simple for the studio crew than having to run headline VTs and do wipes. If they haven't gone to server production yet, then this could also help.

There would probably be only one camera operator in the studio hence why the opening shot moved (by the operator) and as the presenter shot would have been locked off to go to as normal with the shoulder graphic they may not have wanted to move it which could be why they held on the shot out that moved in.

Even if a headline VT failed, they should have just gone from the opening shot to the desk mixing to the presenter to read the heads and then do the first story, but the director sounds in the background as if she was flapping about. Bet TV3 were laughing!

And it's not the only cock up in that vid, 56m 25 in it for a minute there's the amusing incident of the weatehr girls hair rubbing against the microphone as she turns!