CW
cwathen
Founding member
Well here's what I've noticed:
Firstly, the big thing, they've gone widescreen, 7 years after News 24 was generally available in widescreen. That's not a dig - that's an observation of what I see as yet another example of Sky being the only broadcaster in this country to get it right on widescreen and not rush to switch all of their output over to 16:9 seemingly overnight on some date in the middle of 2000. Widescreen Sky News in 2005 is appropriate (even if I don't like the format). There are now enough widescreen TVs out there to justify the switch. As recently as 2/3 years ago, there weren't. They do still need to sort a couple of things out with it however - the weather is clearly still done in 4:3 and then cropped to 16:9 - even the framing is 4:3. In 16:9 it looks weird, in anything else it doesn't work at all.
The new logo is awful. This revamp could still have been done whilst maintaining the old logo, but if they were going to ditch it they needed to come up with something better than this.
The 'hard keyed' Active bug is annoying, and irrelevant to DTT viewers. That said, at least the previous plugs for Sky News Active every 2 minutes seem to have ceased.
The ident sequence - A different concept certainly, and it's nice to see them play with something other than planets after 7 years, but it all seems very reminiscant of early 90's CNN. That said, it's still a lot better than the News 24 titles. It would have been nice to experiment with some new music (remembering that it only appeared hurriedly as a stopgap in 2003 after the original music had to be unexpectedly withdrawn), but I don't mind it that much, and again, it's still better than anything News 24 use.
The new set however I love to pieces, even more than the old one. All in all, not a bad effort from Sky News at all (and long overdue), but I'm not sure how that ident is going to hold up a year from now (as opposed to the 'planets' title sequence which could have survived for years with light refreshes), but I absolutely detest the new red and white 'logo' (stretching the term to ridiculous extremes now, and just when I thought graphic design was on the up again), and can't wait to see the back of it - here's hoping Sky don't leave it in place for 4 years.
Firstly, the big thing, they've gone widescreen, 7 years after News 24 was generally available in widescreen. That's not a dig - that's an observation of what I see as yet another example of Sky being the only broadcaster in this country to get it right on widescreen and not rush to switch all of their output over to 16:9 seemingly overnight on some date in the middle of 2000. Widescreen Sky News in 2005 is appropriate (even if I don't like the format). There are now enough widescreen TVs out there to justify the switch. As recently as 2/3 years ago, there weren't. They do still need to sort a couple of things out with it however - the weather is clearly still done in 4:3 and then cropped to 16:9 - even the framing is 4:3. In 16:9 it looks weird, in anything else it doesn't work at all.
The new logo is awful. This revamp could still have been done whilst maintaining the old logo, but if they were going to ditch it they needed to come up with something better than this.
The 'hard keyed' Active bug is annoying, and irrelevant to DTT viewers. That said, at least the previous plugs for Sky News Active every 2 minutes seem to have ceased.
The ident sequence - A different concept certainly, and it's nice to see them play with something other than planets after 7 years, but it all seems very reminiscant of early 90's CNN. That said, it's still a lot better than the News 24 titles. It would have been nice to experiment with some new music (remembering that it only appeared hurriedly as a stopgap in 2003 after the original music had to be unexpectedly withdrawn), but I don't mind it that much, and again, it's still better than anything News 24 use.
The new set however I love to pieces, even more than the old one. All in all, not a bad effort from Sky News at all (and long overdue), but I'm not sure how that ident is going to hold up a year from now (as opposed to the 'planets' title sequence which could have survived for years with light refreshes), but I absolutely detest the new red and white 'logo' (stretching the term to ridiculous extremes now, and just when I thought graphic design was on the up again), and can't wait to see the back of it - here's hoping Sky don't leave it in place for 4 years.