RTÉ News

Good observation Peter

Yes the director was clearly in a flap, you can hear her screeching over the earpieces, and having to repeat herself at least once. All so typical of the institutionalised top level staff in the RTÉ Newsroom - never expecting anything to go wrong, leaving 'all that technical stuff' up to 'the young lads down the back', too used to routine etc etc.

Is really is pathetic that Six One can barely get through three days without an incident-free bulletin, often with many mishaps in the same production, while the BBC can go for weeks on end with seamless Sixes, including the complications of regional opt-outs.
Indeed that in particular has always made me laugh - can you imagine RTÉ trying to cope with split second regional television?!!

You know, if RTE was a college television station, such errors will be more tolerated (not acceptable, of course, but not hounded).

I work in a university television station as the News Director, and I have to say we look a little like RTE sometimes. I try my best to make it error-free, and it shows.

RTE is really bad in news production. I am quite shocked, as I have always saw it more like a mini-BBC (mind you, I can never receive the channel unless I fly across the Atlantic)

With reference to RTÉ 1's relaunch later in the year, I would like to know if the word "Digital" has been mentioned at all? Any chance that DTT? Or, God forbid, for radio listeners DAB might be in the pipeline?

I've heard reports on RTÉ Radio news commenting on how slowly Eircom is rolling out Broadband in rural areas. "People in glasshouses ........."!!!

Thank God we have people like British Sky Broadcasting to take care of providing a Digital platform!

You're in the US are you channel2tv?

Yes, you're absolutely right, though if anything such standards would not even be tolerated in some colleges! And certainly in the area of field (report) production, far higher standards would be aspired to than the muck that RTÉ churn out.

I was watching Nine last night, and I think it was a report on the 1916 Rising of all things - yet you could barely hear a word the whole way through the report such were the levels of traffic noise and ambient sounds drowning out the reporter, never mind the complete lack of narrative and clear information flow in the piece. Shocking stuff. Unbelieveable that editors let this muck through - again another example of top level staff not giving a toss.
It must make some of the better reporters like Emma O'Kelly despair.

Yes, I do live in the US. I work at my university's student television station, and I can put out some pretty good things (better than RTE ) In fact, my username is actually a description of the station I work at.

I cannot believe RTE can be so careless about natural sounds on television! How can you have such horrible sounds and get away with it?

Indeed - must dig out these reports and show them to you.

It's a great opportunity to be able to work to a professional standard in college isn't it? Alas studio production was largely scoffed at when I did it in college, even though we had great facilities. Just wasn't a priority amongst staff there - studio production doesn't win pretentious awards like drama and documentary
I'd genuinely believe that your output is at least the equivalent in quality to that of RTÉ. I'd love to see some of your programming if you post it online somehow...

Of course! When I return to school on Monday, I will post Friday's news online. Meanwhile, I will post this newscast from a long time ago online. I will be back later.

Here's the news file

SDTV News

Hope you guys enjoy it. This was from February, so we have a revamped news set now. My department is a continuously evolving one.

You guys might remember the music

Link won't work channel2tv...

DAB tests are currently ongoing and DTT tests are due to commence in a while

While it'ss difficult to pin down exactly who is to blame for the situation with DAB in the case of DTT the Government are the ones clearly to blame for the current situation

Check out the IDCG board at Boards.ie for more details

Should work now!

Other people can view this as well! I want to hear from you!

I'm no live telly director, but noticed a few things. It looks edited, there's a straight jump after the two shot at the beginning, so you get to cover that. The only technical issue is a sound jump through the first piece to camera but apart from that, the vision and audio framing is certinly better than RTEs!

However...

It looks so clean becuase it's edited. The timings are so perfect, try doing it all live.

Throw in an opening shot that you've to cue, then running VT with live sound over, cuing presenters for this, then going back to studio for the first report and cuing graphics and any DVEs for 2-ways all live with other people. Then the whole "ack directings easy" gets complex.

I've directed a live local TV news programme on many occasions but that was with two cameras, one presenter and just a stack of VTs coming off an airplay. That's an easy one. However when you throw in more cameras for a politcal based chat show with four guests, a guest in a different studio due to political reasons and a few DVE moves, things start to get a little bit complicated. You should give it a go and just add in more elements that need live direction.

Even then that still looked better than RTE News!

On a side note, I was watching Podge and Rodge recently and from some pretty crude but hillarious closing comments from them, it dips to black and straight to RTE News on 2 for a coming up promo.

"That's enough of the filth.... a man has been charged with sexually assaulting"

I was stunned!