RTÉ News

Roughly translated, I think he said:
That's the news for the moment this evening. Nuacht TG4 is at 7 o'clock, and there's a Nuacht RTÉ special on TG4 featuring all the fun and broken hearts from Kerry and Mayo in the aftermath of the All-Ireland Football Final. That's on TG4 at 8 o'clock tonight.

And that was followed by the goodbye greeting.

Scroll to 0:59 and see the DOG blunder on this evening's Six-One. It's difficult to see it here, but the graphic also jumps to the left first, before being shoved vertically.

I saw that DOG on 6.01 as well - they're having terrible problems with it. Its been like that for a good week or two now - why hasn't it been fixed?

Anyway, the graphics compiler on the 6.01 today obviously failed geography in school because (s)he doesn't know where Thailand is. Instead of the small globe on the left showing Thailand, it was showing Japan and Korea. Well done .

And the panel lights to the bottom right of the back wall are gone again. Or else they're trying to save energy...

Yes one would like to think that production values would have gone up since the relaunch, but in fact they have been worse than usual.
There hasn't been any point posting the countless countless errors that have taken place over the past three weeks; it has just been astounding the level of utter incompetence that has taken place, especially on Six One.

It is patently apparent at this stage that Bryan Dobson is massively p*ssed off at the state of affairs - he has left floundering more times than I care to remember over the past few weeks, with dodgy cues, wrong cuts, jammed VTs, inaccurate running orders, lack of titles, poor autocue operation, constantly irregular use of bed music etc etc etc. If one rounded up all the errors from the past three weeks, they'd have a posting as long as their arm - it has been disgraceful.

In particular, the slightly new format of Six One simply wasn't adequately rehearsed before airing - the 'coming up' links etc were as dodgy as hell for the first two weeks, with wrong cameras cut up and/or individual scripts not practiced. The same with 'coming up' VTs and LVOs - what an absolute disaster. Only now they're getting the hang of it - essentially after using the national airwaves as a training ground for the past few weeks. It beggars belief.
Dobson is so p*ssed off it just oozes from every pore in his body, almost speaking through gritted teeth after every feckup, and even a slightly discernable shake of the head.

Nine is so rigidly formatted that there’s less room for disaster – even so here’s poor Anne being forced into robot mode only last night with a crashed autocue – for the main story ! I mean come on…

Scroll to 0.38:

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2174224.smil


AND tonight another VT disaster. There have been more VT feckups over the past few weeks than an entire year of RTÉ output. Now that’s something!
Scroll to 11.40 – note Anne doesn’t even care towards the end of her line.
I don’t blame her.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2174642.smil

I love that eyebrow lol


Also scroll to 4.44 to watch Tommie Gorman in Belfast being cut up with a bluescreen behind him, instead of Sean Wheelan in Hungary.
And in yet another embarrassing setup, Tommie’s backdrop when live was an appalling chromakey. The backdrop pierced through his eyes and tie, and his whole outline shimmered horribly. A typical state of affairs with an RTÉ link.

Now multiply all of this by, oh I don’t know, roughly 876, and one gets an idea of the utter muck we’ve had dished out to us every day over the past month.

You can change all the pres you like, but you can’t change the culture.

dear God RTE News seems to be falling apart!

Thanks for the thanks, sstepski. I think moving Siún to an English route of the News would be a disaster. Nice and all as her regional Gaeilge accent is, her english accent is atrocious, with her native tones being very evident when she pronounces words with O's and syllabyls close together. This is a common thing with people from her area (i know from living there once too!) and she would definitely need some elocution lessons before transition to English news. You can hear the odd pronounciation and accented O's if you listen to her when she reads the 'News for the Deaf'.

On the RTÉ DOG, I brought this up a while ago when I noticed it happening to Nuacht a lot. Last night though was the first time I saw it bounce so much and then being removed for about 2 minutes. When you think that it's probably the simplest of things they must do for the news, it beggars belief that it can screw up so much! It's just a layer of graphic that stays on all the time!! How can it be so difficult to create!?

I completely agree with Teilifis. Lately the news is getting worse and the format is STILL the flippin same! They're throwing LVOs and in-studio interviews in all over the place on Six One but we're still getting the same tripe from the correspondants! They're getting worse if anything at dealing with the LVOs, with Jenny O'Sullivan forcing an embarrassed smile on Sunday evening in Killarney after the Kerry match as she motioned to someone behind the camera as her LVO broke in!

Phillip Bromwell is a breath of fresh air from the field of reporting of late... lavishing us with nice cues, great emphatic narration (not just shouting into the mic) and interesting twists to the stories. He's up there with Emma O'Kelly for presentation's sake. George Lee is improving also, with the occasional smile breaking out. The shabbiness continues with the omnipitent David 'D4' Murphy still not realising that you can find something to do outside the Dublin border. His reports are getting more crass and boring.

All this feeds into the silent newsroom however, which at this stage serves as more of a filler for the gallery crew to tie up all the loose ends, rather than the centre stage of the outfit. Dobbo is anchored to the chair almost and his pain and agony at the countless feck-ups is clearly evident. Glad to see Sharon's missing of late. Her replacement is much more suited to a Dobbo teaming-up with the age gap narrowing. They're both as unanimated as eachother too so there's no gap their either.

P.S. Someone was asking about whether the Gallery for nuacht communicates with the newsreader in Gaeilge or English... I would hope that it would be done as Gaeilge, because it's quite difficult to translate on the spot. The native speakers like Bríd Óg and Siún certainly couldn't handle english commands because they would more naturally think in Gaeilge. I know that I'd prefer Gaeilge commands. Mick Lally of course is an excellent gaeilgeoir so his direction would naturally be as Gaeilge, and there's a few other editors you only see named on the Nuacht.

The nine has been a bit all over the place really tonight. After the report about the riots in Budapest, Anne said that they hoped to return to Seán Whelan a bit later in the bulletin - suggesting that the satellite link had crashed. They did return to him after the break though. Perhaps he was not ready for the link earlier in the bulletin, but I'd say myself that the link crashed.

And then before the report before the break, Anne was left waiting for nearly 10 seconds for the report to kick in. She was just sitting there staring into space and for some rather bizzare reason - wait for it - the headline bed kicked in while she was waiting! It really does make you laugh now that we're so used to it.

http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2175033.smil

Scroll to 11:03.

But I think Anne has improved a lot lately - much more alert and less sleep-inducing! But at the end she just stared into the monitor and then into the zooming-out camera whilst the end title music played out instead of rummaging with her papers as most of them do - rather strange!

This sounds bizarre, but I actually think that it's getting to the stage where very soon we could actually see a bulletin where nothing works at all. It's farfetched, but it would surprise me in the slightest.

I do love that eyebrow though, I must say

My god this just gets worse and worse!
It's actually quite amazing how Anne manages to do that set-in-stone look - I don't know of anyone else who can remain so completely still. She should be one of those statue performers on Grafton Street! How does she do it?!!

At the same time, how does she think that comes across on screen? She obviously doesn't think about it - if she did she'd be mortified. Rather she just blanks it out of her mind, pretending that it never even happened. In fact as she's doing it she's pretending it's not happening!! It's hilarious - I love the way she always does it.
Perhaps she stays so still in an effort to suggest that the picture has suddenly frozen, and that it's not actually an embarrassing live situation at all

Note how wary she was of all cues thereafter - she looks at the monitor for every single upcoming report afterwards, desperate to ensure that she's not left lingering in shot, again a characteristic of hers. You always know when Anne is nervous during a dodgy link as she either glues herself to the monitor at the end, or immediately turns to her papers.

But good god what a mess - a sat link down (note Anne says we 'hope' to contact Seán), a completely fecked up VT, the kicking in of the bed instead (evidently from the subsequent ad break VT), the loss of the 'after the break' VT as well (which was the one that kicked in earlier) forcing the director to instruct Anne and Pres that there'd be no VT and instead they'd lead out with a 'see you after the break' link. Then they fecked up this emergency script by the vision mixer and/or director cutting away from Anne as she was speaking - I mean what a farce!

ALSO Anne presented this entire half hour bulletin with her lapel wires hanging across her white top - the director didn't even notice them, which speaks volumes as to their attention to what's going on on screen.

ALSO as I knew would happen from day one, those two desk mics have migrated out from their purpose-designed desk slot and now perch horribly on top of the glass surface, their wires trailing across and down the hole. This has been happening regularly now. What the heck is wrong with a double lapel, especially if they can't get decent audio from the desk mics?!!
At least they were moved out of sight after the Ingrid Miley interview, suggesting some in-studio presence...

And Anne keeps staring ridiculously at that monitor at the end of every bulletin (though not as bad as tonight!) - why can't she just sign off and instantly turn to her papers? Feck the viewer - just turn off!
It's so embarrassing to watch - similarly regarding the opening wide, where she's just sitting here like a statue ready to be cut up to MS. Shuffle your papers or something Anne - anything!

Indeed it's very noticeable how a number of presenters are relying on the floor monitor in the new scheme - Doyle, MacGrianna, and even Dobson keep glancing off camera to check out what's going on. And not in a traditional way like Ken Hammond usually does at the end of every link, rather it's an irritating nervous glance during conversations or during wides etc. It must be a giant plazma or something if it's that distracting for them.

Anne's face before the late start of the grocery price wars report was priceless. Is her tilting head trademark now changing to a "rabbit in the headlights" look - skip to 24.05.

In the headline sequence, do all the stories featured need to have the "black oval faded in the the screen"?

And is there really a watch alarm beeping going into the break?

Aye, I noticed that as well - its at the start of the titles as well.

Well Sharon's recent absence is no longer a mystery - she is the Master of Ceremonies for today's Ryder Cup opening ceremony. And she's doing a good job too!

Another example of RTÉ not being able to go five seconds without a mistake... At the top of Six-One this evening, Bryan can be heard talking to the director as the "It's Six-One" voiceover was kicking in.

No need to even scroll here