RTÉ News

Lots and Lots.

And you can't even find it floating about the internet (in that kind of file sharing way!) as it requires hardware USB keys to let the application run then you've to have all the other bits like Connection Manager to run the server and Countdown / Airspeed to do playout and Ingest.

You could probably get an educational discount thing, but i'd say your still running into the £100ks. A client probably would be about £4k for the machine and no storage, but it's all custom solutions. Have a look at Avid Casestudies and you can find out all about it!.

It is a very very smart system.

I was browsing through digitalspy.co.uk today and came across this post...I was in fits!

An almighty and cringe-worthy running order cock-up tonight on the nine . Poor Eileen was completely stumped! You rarely see her so lost! And then again at the end as she was reading the main headline she got muddled. This kind of thing seems to be happening very often recently or maybe its just a coincidence or something...i dont know. Video isnt up yet but Teilifís will prob sort that out!

Also, I saw that they've improved the appearance of the text on the news for the deaf (possibly on cinnlínte nuachta as well). Its very much like arial now and it looks much better. Now why didn't they do that a long time ago?

Were they not changed to Arial with the 2003 launch?

http://thetvroom.com/images-rte-one/rte-one-news/images-2005/one/nuacht-3.jpg
www.thetvroom.com

Certainly they used to be in a cluttered Times font as they were a direct feed of the autocue itself. Have they since been changed from that above?

Oh God, I too was watching the Nine. What a farce. For how much longer have we to endure this grossly unprofessional muck? Yet another running order cock-up as you say Phen, so bad that Eileen couldn't do anything but sit there like a gobdaw. I've never seen that happen before on any news broadcast anywhere. The autocue was not aligned, a common enough occurance, so she was forced to turn to her script, but for some utterly inexplicable reason she had no hard copy either! You can even see her shaking her head at the director at the fact she was no script - it's not here, help!!!

What's even better is if you listen towards the end of the reporter link just before Eileen you can hear her very clearly saying in an urgent tone 'autocue gone', which in turn what seems to be a runner/PA in the studio immediately repeats to the gallery through the door! Why Eileen thought her audio would be turned off towards the end of the link I don't know...

Scroll to 6.20 to watch the drama:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0507/9news.html

And yet again later on at the very end, scroll to 19.06

Truly appalling. So will we start taking bets on next week's feckups?

Brilliant description of Eileen there on DigitalSpy 'slow motion' indeed . Still she is very professional, just a pity she wouldn't liven up a bit.

And is it just me or are there far more cock ups on the News in the past year or so than usual? I've watched RTÉ News regularly for the past 8-10 years now and I don't think things have ever been as bad. It used to be the shoddy production values in general that were worthy of complaint, but rarely standard studio operations, with which two days can barely pass now without a hitch of some kind on one of the major bulletins. :

Thanks for all the report info there Peter. I suspect RTÉ are still largely on a VT-based system, but if the case no doubt this will all change come September.

Looking at that text picture, I can't help but to say one thing that I have been holding back...

Why is Seamus O Scanlon (sp?) still at RTE? He is not too good at it, to say the least.

I really can't beleive there's been ANOTHER muck up! That has to be one of the best. Still brownie points to the vision mixer who held on the helpline graphic before mixing back to Eileen who was still flummoxed as to what to do. Whether Autocue gone meant the thing died or it just was left scrolling is hard to tell, but it seems to have come back.

Clearly Eileen needs to sort her scripts out if she's flicking through and can't find what she's looking for. Even UTV aren't that bad. If they're using a decent ENPS type tool or even that, it should print each intro on a separate page to prevent that, of if not, it'll still be on the page she was reading!



That woman really needs to get her scripts sorted! as she seemingly in this one wasn't paying attention waiting for her cue and didn't know where she was. However, it could have been the director asleep or as could be the case, they're on shorter staff for the weekend so the director is also vision mixing.

I know that this has nothing to do with TV, but on RTE radio one this morning at 8 am, the presenter said we dont have the headlines and then some of then the first report went awol as well.

Yes, I was listening too. Brian Jennings was reading so slowly through the lead story as to make Eileen appear like Road Runner . He was crawling through it, obviously keeping an eye or an ear out for a clearly emerging problem.


I don't think Eileen was at fault in this case - it seems her script for the Iraq story simply wasn't there. RTÉ as far as I know print 2/3 links per page, though this could be just for LVOs, with full pages for main stories, not sure. However certainly she ought to have been aware of what was coming up next, and if the running order and scripts were checked beforehand it would have been noticed. I don't know the extent to which these things are rehearsed/examined in pre-production by the newscaster.

Also RTÉ News never seem to use their ENPS built into the desk for regular bulletins - so there's no back-up material there either.

As you say there Peter, it's not clear what caused to autocue to go down - yet this constantly happens with RTÉ. What causes it to be so unreliable? A story that's been left out, an accidental pushing forward by the autocue op, a crashing of the system??? It's so unreliable I cannot imagine what causes the problem. Similarly for late night bulletins you regularly turn on to see presenters reading scripts from their hard copies. Just what is it about RTÉ that causes this, yet you'd be lucky to see this happen twice a year with the BBC, if even...???

Of course the flip side to all of this is the impact on the newsreaders themselves. Personally if I was reading I'd be absolutely furious at being made a fool of and made look so unprofessional so regularly - furious. I'm surprised they don't go charging out of studio on particularly bad bulletins and eat the head of the director or pre-prod staff. Similarly having the dark cloud of something going wrong constantly hanging over you with every RTÉ bulletin must be most disconcerting.

Edit: Just seen the start of Nine tonight with Eileen - yet another dodgy cue with the cut from Pres to the Newsroom and Eileen looking off camera :rolleyes:

I'd expect it was printed by a PA or someone and just thrown to her before she appeared on air. Even still, most would check what they're going to introduce and in many cases, re-jig the intros the producer has written to make sure they know what's coming up and are aware of any funny words or pronounciations.



I would have hoped it was the headline sequence and first intro and that's generally it, the rest would follow suit and any 2-ways are just a simple case of checking comms, but watching that it'd make you wonder.


I did see RTE advertise for Autocue operators a while back, so that could explain it. Even then you generally during autocue op make sure your constantly in the right place and don't let it run on as most controllers have a wheel that bounces back and stops unless your moving the script on, so that might not have been an issue. Computer crashing rarely, or one thing it could have been was that someone was updating the info on ENPS which sends data to the Autocue, and it could have been in the middle of a refresh whilst it was loading the text and subsequently went offline for a second.



I am surprised there's not been any major kick up made about it, as it really is unprofessional for a national broadcaster to do that kind of messups, when TV3 on a smaller budget doesn't seem to have any problems.


Sigh. Another one then! Looks like not long to wait. My guess is a next major cockup by Thursday, but my best one has to be the chair!

Now I'm not going to go off on a rant but WHO THE HELL IS IN CHARGE UP THERE? GET OFF YOUR LAZY A*SE AND JUST WATCH WHATS GOING ON!!! Its like as if they don't give two hoots about what goes out on air! It really and truly has become farsical at this stage and I really mean it when I say that RTÉ has the worst news output I've EVER seen...ever. I can hardly believe my own eyes! And how people like Dunne, Dobson and Doyle can put up with it day in-day out is far beyond me! Come September, they better sort something out or i won't be held responsible for my actions!

Of course, you could just not watch RTE News.... or ignore the bits of pres.