RTÉ News

Interesting news, even if it was a long time coming. To clarify things, she will not be presenting The Afternoon Show, but rather an afternoon programme to replace The Big Bite I presume, which finished its last series just there and will not be returning. McWilliams, in his ever-fast scaling of the broadcast ladder, is now going to make a series of documentaries for RTÉ to be broadast in prime time.

It remains to be seem how competent Seoige is as a presenter; she is more of a steely presence on screen than a real-life, personable individual. Personally I think she is an excellent newsreader, but she comes with a heck of a lot of baggage - she's doing so much external 'work' now as to make her nearly as bad as Kaplinsky across the water. A lot of excess luggage needs to be left behind if she's to remain a neutral newscaster.

Interesting she's not going into the Newsroom yet - suppose she would ruffle a heck of a lot of feathers. RTÉ News are incredibly stodgy in this regard - there's been no new blood in newscasting in years, aside from the odd journalist guest appearance.

She certainly is doing the rounds though! TG4 TV3 Sky News RTÉ. Wherever next...the moon?

Just imagine what a relaunch they could have if they got they're act together and brought in Seoige...RTÉ News would almost certainly pull in more viewers if she was put on the 6.01 with Dobson. She's a household name for goodness sake! But it probably will happen sooner or later like you say, Teilifís.

It'll be the first time RTÉ Television have taken someone so high-profile from a competitor, should she move to News. Even doing what is proposed is a big step for the national broadcaster - she's inextricably linked with everything in Irish broadcasting that is not RTÉ!

And not to be negative all the time but, really and truly, a gem of a cock-up today on One - scroll to 17.23:

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2137566.smil

Also Sunday with poor old Una - scroll to 5.06

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2136659.smil

And Anne getting in a muddle on Tuesday below. Nothing major, but why does she always go all weird and dismissive whenever something is slightly dodgy in the script or autocue? She changes in a flash from chirpy and pleasant to almost machine-like sterness Scroll to 25.15:

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2137044.smil

The picture quality isn't great, but you can really she how p*ssed off she is at the error, checking her notes at the end with a puzzled expression . Contrast how stern she is with her beaming intro to the bulletin. Things like that really rattle her.


And another final error that's been prevalent for the past three weeks or so now is the fading of levels between Presentation and the Newsroom at the start of every Nine bulletin. For some reason the Newsroom source doesn't kick in at full level staright away, instead it gradually fades up, often making the start of the script barely audible. Appalling it hasn't been sorted yet. Imagine the BBC getting by even two days like this before someone was held to account?! Not that it would happen in the first place with them.

Do you think they will ever get a revamp for the studio with CSO or something BBC esque? It really is starting to look dated.

That ones funny, think it's down to unprepared presenter. And a look at the news again, erm, no, and then he goes off and says something in Irish!



Oh god. Generally in News clean sound is recorded on Channel 1 and the V/O is laid down on Channel 2, and mono-fied as it leaves the sound desk, so why this became an issue considering it's a set standard is beyond me.




Seems like she doesn't want to get seen as being stupid. Wrong channel then lol

Grainne moving is interesting as only recently she was offered cash to do shifts in London. So maybe the fact her family is back in Dublin is a factor (her husband is a producer in the TV3 Newsroom) has made her want to come back but why doing an afternoon programme is beyond me. Chances are RTE didn't want to rattle feathers with their current presenters.

You know, this makes me wonder if Grainne will eventually end up at the BBC. Her co-presenter at the TG4 Nuache, Gillian Ni Cheallieagh (sp?) did.

Indeed - a truly unacceptable error, one I've seen happen a few times before too. I wonder how they resolved it so quickly to be able to get back to it again inside a few minutes. Was it just a case of altering a channel setting on the VT player?

Chances are it's a setting on the sound desk so the feed leaving studio is mono, so it could either have been that this wasn't correctly set or, if they're still using VT machines, the wrong switch was flicked for the sound output to be single rather than a mix.

Are RTE on server based newsroom yet.. I've heard of them getting Avid as it's been a success for TV3 but not sure if they're in and running yet and with them spending a load of cash on new Flints for graphics in News so maybe it's all for this mysterious relaunch.

TV Studios, AFAIK, are either getting Avid or Final Cut Pro (yes, that runs only on Macs) for editing. I worked with Final Cut Pro while I did the news at my university and it is a very forgiving, easy system that is very suited to news editing.

Double Post

The choice on what they go for depends on what they plan to do with it. Final Cut Pro is generally a one station solution, yes you can share media and have an ingest machine but still, once the report is finished, you have to export it / dump it back to tape etc.

Newscutter is far far better as is Quantels system, as once the feeds / rushes are ingested, it's then edited together to form the story where it can be fed back to tape for archiving and retrieval, or sent to a server for playout where it's instantly available within seconds of it being sent. That's where it's main advantage comes in over Final Cut Pro as there's yet to be an all in one editing / playout system. Yes there's other things out there that let it do that kind of thing, but bringing in more third party stuff is only going to cause more hassle than it's worth.

TV3 use a Newscutter system where the stuff can be edited within seconds of it being ingested and then played out with seconds to spare to TX. Main advantage is that not only cross media sharing, but stories can be edited right up to the minute.

Wonder how much these things cost...