Sky News

Rubin must go.

I tuned in to the show at about 8.28. Sport.

After 8.30, Rubin appears with ''thaaankss veeeeery maaach faaar thaat summaarryyy''

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Rubin ''Time faar a raaand ap of the days nooz in Britain now''

Gillian Joseph at the newswall for five minutes

Rubin appears again with a report about global warming. How is this news? The Kilamanjaro (sp) story has been around for about 3 months now... Sky covered it at the time.

I mean, he's hardly even on his own show. He spends most of his time faffing about handing over to other (better) presenters to do their bit, and when he does appear you kind of wish the other presenters were still on. Dire. And he's the sort of person you can see just not getting better... also doesn't help that he's American. I find that a bit turnoff.

Well - Copenhagen (like Hilversum last night) is in the wrong shape. You've got a long-form interview on a flagship appointment to view show - it would be nice to get it the right aspect ratio wouldn't it? It isn't as if they've had loads of incoming OSs to line up during the last hour.

They are going to have to get better at this widescreen stuff...

*** Hey - at least they've fixed Copenhagen mid way through - they didn't bother yesterday. Sadly it seems that the OS being ARCed has caused all sorts of issues (wonder if the ARCs aren't properly timed), so when they cut Copenhagen to line the audio started to break up as did the vision, and they've had to switch the studio output to 4:3 ***

Have they really been piloting??

To be fair, I do remember reading comments from a Fox presenter a year or so ago who said that when they first launched their appointment to view schedule the shows were absolutely dire... and that they look back on them now and just cringe at the stuff they were producing. Can only hope it gets better for them.

My bet is that Chris Roberts (who is excellent) will replace Rubin perhaps temporarily if he isn't better in a month or two, and that they'll get Allan King to do the Sky News Tonight show instead. I just can't see him lasting.

I think that was just fixed for the second question.

Until that is we had the widescreen breakup problem again, and the whole things just gone to 4:3.

Rubin needs to learn how to ask a question. Its driving me mad listening to him drone on. 'Can you accept that the Kyoto protocol was supposed to be the beginning not the end of the worlds dealing with climate change?...and the idea was to phase in the difficult choices'...and so on. Is nobody giving this guy feedback?

Agree with it all. I' m beginning to think he needs glasses or contacts - or to learn to read... Could be the cameras are a fair distance away on the new "huge set" - but the other presenters are coping.

Call me slow if you like, but I know why JT looked incompetant last night. The strap said "breaking news" and then sat there for ages.
Do you think they told JT, and then left him sitting there with no info, having reacted to the news alert?
JT is great. He deserves better than that. He is better than that. *sigh*

Yep - and with a guest as good as Bjorn Lomborg at making a subject engaging and interesting, Rubin did well to make it such a dull watch.

The new look isn't helping much . There seem to be just two shots for interviews via the news wall on WNT - a superwide over the shoulder and a nasty eyeline of James. If there was some movement on the wide, or a bit of variation, it would be a lot more interesting to watch. Also cutting back to the wide so you can see a float running in a small box on the wall doesn't really add much.

That said - I did watch a large portion of the show - maybe it is a clever "appointment to rubber neck at a car crash" strategy?

And at the end they got me thinking I'll watch tomorrow, but only because Keith Graves is going to be on..

Exploiting the situation? Or just doing what a news channel should do? Cover breaking news hard and in depth, get the facts, put it in context, then move on when the "breaking" period is over. Sky used to be good at that too.

I'll accept though that N24 and ITN are probably both trying to up their games this week....!

I don't blame them for doing it... but you have to admit that given the story, it was obviously excessive. If they keep doing that, they'll risk getting accused of being too sensational whenever something happens, a la Sky. But yes, Sky handled it pretty badly from the little I saw.

As an aside, w12, it would be good if you could post a (v. brief) indication of the overnights for the next week or so, just to see how things pan out. Unless anyone else has them, that is.

Maybe the person operating the crane has gone home.

I'd be interested to know how many more floor staff this new studio requires - I thought before the cameras were entirely rademec (and presumably a 4 camera setup rather than 8 or 12 or whatever it is now).

And does the last text producer finish shift at around 9/10ish like they used to? (so you end up with poorly worded astons if anything important happens).