I would agree to an extent about the lack of news on the Sky Report (although I see the programme has made the Drudge Report (www.drudgereport.com) this evening... a dubious badge of honour if ever there was one). But then there aren't all that many people looking for news at 7pm anyway - 6 million are gone by the time 6.30 comes and the Six O'Clock has finished, and another 5.5 million go with the ITV Evening News.
As for people not looking for long form reports in the 7pm hour - The Real Story and Tonight with Trevor McDonald were built around these time slots. Maybe the less said about the Real Story the better, but regardless.
I would agree about the World News Tonight slot. I said before it launched that Rubin wasn't the right man for the job, and even as someone involved in the political world, I find it hard to get enthusiastic. It seems to be ''news from the third world and corrupt democracies''.
I think it is important, however, to remember that they haven't done this without research. I take on board entirely the argument that, yes, people did (and do) turn to Sky News for, well, news. But not enough of them. Sky clearly believe that in the timeslots they've chosen (again, based on research) the audiences for these particular shows will be higher than what came before them. What we need to wait to find out is whether that assumption is correct, and that is why I wish people would stop rushing to judgement about it before the gallery have even worked out which buttons to press.
Yes, there has been a lot of fluff, but then this is a relaunch... there always is. They've had reports (the cult thing, the suicide report) prepared for ages. The real test will come when they're producing most things on the day, for the day, not a week or two in advance. That won't be for a while yet.
As I've said before, I like the look, the content isn't 100% on the button at the moment, but we'll see.
However, I can see some of the points being levied against them here. When all said and done, the channel is used as a loss leader, to strengthen the Sky brand, and point viewers to the subscription side of the business. Yes, it gives them gravitas amongs journalists and the government but it does seem a rather lavish vanity project in a relatively uncertain time for the broadcaster. I'm thinking of the following risk factors to their pay tv / subscription business model :
- Sky One audience in general decline
- Question mark over future exclusive football rights
- Threat of an opposing FreeSat operation
- The success of Freeview
- A strengthened cable operator
No wonder they're looking for alternative revenues (buying up a broadband ISP) and dabbling with Freeview (Sky 3). Sky's battleground is elsewhere, not really in a phoney war with the BBC over a news channel.
Oh and they need to lose the two half hour sports programmes I reckon, that is getting too far into Sky Sports News territory.
I think looking at the ratings after only 24 hours of the new service is pretty pointless. You have to allow things to bed in - both in terms of finding an audience, and tweaking the format.
Sky have obviously moved to 16:9 and server playout - both of which are major changes to the way they work. News 24 did this in 1997 - so has had 8 years to get to grips with these issues - and they still have problems. Sky have done well to get away with the on-screen problems they've had. There were quite a lot of them (lots of wrong shape pictures and clips hitting black) - but certainly not as many as News 24 had when they launched.
(News 24 acted as a test bed for a lot of new technology - as to an extent did ITN - so other broadcasters - including Sky - are benefiting from this in terms of reliability)
Whether the new programme formats work for the audience will take time to tell. For me - personally - I found James Rubin un-nerving, I found the catchphrases during Live at Five intensely annoying, and the three presenter format with them chatting (at times quite innanely) really doesn't work - for me. It may work for other audiences. I wasn't a big Sky viewer beforehand - and am unlikely to watch more because of the relaunch.
Robert Nisbet is a class act - and I'm glad Sky are chosing to do less diary-led stuff. Some of their entertainment stuff from Matt Smith is quite good - nice that there is a place for this (unlike N24 which could do more media and serious entertainment reporting). I find the current obsession with "Have Your Say" "What Do You Think?" content intensely annoying though. I don't care what people think - I want facts and analysis - not opinions.
There is a place for e-mail feedback - especially in disaster situations where people are able to provide information via this route - but I find the "What do you think" stuff totally pointless and a waste of my viewing time.
Some one said a few pages back that Sunrise was a little less like the Weather channel this morning. I am fairly positive about the whole new look thing so far, except I can't what ratio to watch it in on my 4:3 telly!! I wish they would just scrap that bloody stupid 'news@sky.com/Active/sky.com/news' thing and move the dog to the far left of the 4:3 cut off point!
Anyway, there was a weather forcast at 7.58, todays weather was mentioned in the headlines (or just after) at 8.05, there was a short chat with the weather presenter at 8.15 then another forecast at 8.28. Still a little more weather than I would care for, particulary since the 3D graphics are useless because you can't see exactly where the rain in falling on the country, there was a shot that must of been hovering just above London, and it looked like it was raining everywhere north of the capital, but in fact it was just Cumbria or somewhere. I don't like the cloud graphics either, they look to much like the BBC fog graphics.
As has been pointed out, it's far, far too early to judge ratings.
But, there has to be a point when the value of the relaunch will be judged- I would say by the end of January (given the natural slump over the christmas period).
Frankly, if Sky aren't ahead of News 24 in ratings terms by the end of January, it would be hard to judge the relaunch as anything but a disaster. It's blatently obvious that there is no long term viability in paying Eamon Holmes £2m a year to attract 40k viewers- Sunrise has to hit a bare minimum 5% share to have any credibility as a breakfast alternative (currently 2%).
I was surprised at the choice of Live at 5 for the Sky Three simulcast- since this channel is going 24 hours, I really think they should stick Sunrise on Sky Three and keep live at 5 on the news channel only.
As a final point- I said a few weeks ago that I don't think there's a great audience for ATV in the UK, although this attempt by Sky is undoubtedly brave. As I've said before, I don't see much of it lasting 12 months- I think World News Tonight falls into this category in a much shorter time frame.
Some one said a few pages back that Sunrise was a little less like the Weather channel this morning. I am fairly positive about the whole new look thing so far, except I can't what ratio to watch it in on my 4:3 telly!! I wish they would just scrap that bloody stupid 'news@sky.com/Active/sky.com/news' thing and move the dog to the far left of the 4:3 cut off point!
There is no single "4:3 cut off point" as different 4:3 TVs have different safe areas. The DOG is probably positioned just within the 4:3 graphic safe area. This is designed so that graphics aren't cut off on the majority of 4:3 TVs - so incorporates a degree of allowance for the cut-off on 4:3 TVs. If you didn't allow for this and aligned the DOG hard at the edge of the 4:3 portion (outside 4:3 safe) you'd end up with KY NEWS or Y NEWS on some 4:3 TVs...
There is no getting around this - which is why most BBC services don't put ANY text outside 4:3 graphics safe. Sky have - and that is why 4:3 viewers are getting annoyed when they see the bottom left stuff cropped. I think Sky have, in general, done a good job with their graphics - they look a bit more balanced than the News 24 set.
Does look like they need to work on safe areas for graphics in reports.
Another worrying sign was that I've seen a lot of 4:3 displays in the newsroom displaying full-height 16:9 video (i.e. tall and thin). If they aren't monitoring their video in the right aspect ratio (i.e. by using a 16:9 display or a 4:3 display letterboxed) then they're going to make mistakes - or worse people will get used to looking at the wrong shape pictures and make poor judgements.
But that last point is part of the problem of the "bigger picture" of this relaunch. (And it may well be too soon to draw "broad brush" conclusions). Two weeks ago, you could turn on Sky News and know what you were getting. A competent news service at normal times that went big, big, big on breaking news. At seven in the morning, nine in the evening, two in the afternoon, it was there. Sure, there were subtle differences across the day, but the basic product was the same.
Yes, I always thought that consistency was Sky News's biggest strength, given the uneven nature of both N24 and ITVNC's output. I'm surprised they've jettisoned that advantage so readily.
But that last point is part of the problem of the "bigger picture" of this relaunch. (And it may well be too soon to draw "broad brush" conclusions). Two weeks ago, you could turn on Sky News and know what you were getting. A competent news service at normal times that went big, big, big on breaking news. At seven in the morning, nine in the evening, two in the afternoon, it was there. Sure, there were subtle differences across the day, but the basic product was the same.
Yes, I always thought that consistency was Sky News's biggest strength, given the uneven nature of both N24 and ITVNC's output. I'm surprised they've jettisoned that advantage so readily.
It's one thing that's bothering me about the new format. The way some stories are dropped for a few hours because they don't "fit" into the programme's editorial.
George Galloway seemed to vanish for about an hour earlier, only to come back for Live at 5.
It's refreshing to watch the overnight news now, as it's very measured and just no nonsense news.
I have no doubt things will get tweaked as time goes on - but the content needs a bit of work - I don't might each show having a slant on what stories...for example if Sky News Today want to look at the smoking ban implications for the general public and Sky Report look at the political implications of the row in the cabinet then that's fine. But it seems other stories are being cut because of this.
Still I'm sure it's the least of their worries looking at the technical faults they've had today - it's making presenters look incompetent and that's a shame, one thing you could always say for Sky is that the presenters looked and acted comfortably. Live at 5 is now like it's Jeremy Thompson's first presenting gig.
Still, I hope such issues will be sorted out in due course. It needs a couple of months for sure.
I was surprised at the choice of Live at 5 for the Sky Three simulcast- since this channel is going 24 hours, I really think they should stick Sunrise on Sky Three and keep live at 5 on the news channel only.
I guess Sunrise being simulcast on Five means that is probably less likely to happen?
Yep - the overnight service does now stick out. The desk based presentation (albeit a very nice desk with a very nice newswall backdrop) and decent levels of news content make it far more watchable for me than the daytime stuff.