Sky News

BBC London have lost a fair share of their presenters in the past year, if only Sky and ITV could take a couple of the travel girls too.

One might argue that's not a great loss.

The format of Live at 5 strikes me as a bit of a loss. Seems rather pointless having this great big news centre with supposedly all these great presenting positions when you go and plonk an anchor at a desk with a stretched video feed of the gallery behind him, either because you can't be bothered to, or can't, do the real thing.

Does rather defeat the point a little.

Yes - arguably the old Live at Five looked cleaner and crisper than the new one. The gallery in the newswall looks soft and murky - and not at all a "grabby" shot. The spinning nationwide cube is toe-curlingly bad - as are the cliched "Five reasons" etc. tag lines.

Caught Live at 5 on Friday with Martin - it was hilarious! Thought we were about to go down the news-pipe as it was sooo Day Today.

I'd only seen it once with JT before since relaunch and though I'd heard about their silly Top Three and 'Let's Go Nationwide', they didn't use them - perhaps because Blunkett had just resigned and they had to do some proper news.

But when I saw it on Friday all the silly phrases had returned, with Martin doing a fantastic Chris Morris impression. What are they thinking with the revolving cube? Tacky as anything!

So over it went back to the proper news of channel 507!

If they win News Channel of the Year this year, it'll be obvious that some of the Murdoch millions spent on the relaunch went to bribe the judges at the RTS!

Interesting to see how the knives have started to come out for the "bigger, better, bolder" Sky News... or whatever the Sky PR say it is.
Discuss.

Observer, November 6 2005
Revamped Sky News finds its limit
It may be filling those gaps in between the news stories, but the relaunched Sky News is losing audience share and missing, well ... the news.

The revamp was designed to tackle News 24's lead by making Sky appear less like a continuous news flow and more of a place to find specific programmes. But in the first week of its relaunch, the gap between the channels grew.

To make matters worse, News 24's gain has come from Sky-subscribing households. Figures from the British Audience Research Board (Barb) show Sky losing 300,000 viewers on average in the first week, with BBC News 24 gaining 200,000. Sky fared particularly badly at the weekend, when the BBC had 42 per cent more viewers. Eyes will be peeled today for week two's statistics, which look set to be just as bad.

In the daytime, when Sky used to have the edge on breaking news, it has now been overtaken by its competitor. The BBC beat it to several crucial stories, including David Blunkett's failure to attend a Work and Pensions meeting and his subsequent resignation.


Media Guardian, November 7 2005
Media Monkey Diary
Two weeks into the multi-million pound revamp at Sky News and its new big-name signings are yet to translate into audiences.

Monkey hears that, last week, ratings for Sunrise - the breakfast show co-hosted by former GMTV presenter Eamonn Holmes - averaged 40,000 viewers, down 11,000 on the same time last year. Come on Eamonn, work that breakfast magic!

Meanwhile, the award for worst autocue reader in the world must go to James Rubin, the former Clinton aide who now presents Sky's hour of "inner-nesh-naal noos" - whatever that is You would have thought he would be better prepared - he is after all married to CNN superstar Christiane Amanpour.


The Independent, November 7 2005
Matthew Norman's Diary
FINALLY, A BRIEF visit to Sky News's Sunrise, to check how Eamonn Holmes is settling in (perfectly well, in fact), unearths some remarkable work by the people whose job it is to write the captions that scroll along the bottom of the screen.

"Blair Under Pressure," read one last Thursday morning. Underneath, meanwhile, by way of clarifying the concept, another caption in smaller type ran: "Tony Blair is under pressure."

Genius.

Don't forget Broadcast.
Hey Cat - shove this up your rear...



Sky News losing viewers since relaunch
Paul Revoir
07 November 2005 13:38
Sky News has lost 300,000 viewers since the channel's multi-million pound re-launch two weeks ago, as the new state of the art set and re-jigged schedule fails to impress viewers.

Meanwhile rival channel News 24 has put on 200,000 viewers and has had a 0.56% share as compared with Sky's 0.48%

The Sky News launch has been aimed at expanding the channel beyond just big events and breaking news, with a more "informal" and "flexible" approach.

But some of the channels' ambitious new programming such as former Bill Clinton aide James Rubins' World News Tonight at 8pm has proved to be a flop with viewers. The programme at one point dipped as low as 1,000 viewers, despite getting 49,000 viewers on its opening night when Tony Blair was a guest.

It is against two of Sky News more established presenters - Julie Etchingham and Jeremy Thompson between 5pm and 7pm, that News 24's biggest gains have come and it has also been adding viewers at weekends.

The BBC is claiming that it is taking viewers straight from Sky, in particular older downmarket men.

Though the article may speak for itself - I don't think there is a need for such a direct attack on a member.

Just because you're clearly a bitter ex-Sky or current BBC or ITV employee doesn't mean you should jump at the chance of telling us all how poor Sky is.

Some of us have learnt to be a little more objective and offer criticism where its due, not just because of the outlet it happens to come from.

So shove that up your rear.

I wouldn't have thought that was a demographic that Sky would be unduly perturbed about losing, would it?

I can't say I had much opportunity to watch much TV last week, but I turned SNT on this afternoon, and saw a very serious piece with Jayne Secker in the studio (glad to see they have let her out from the Sky Report) talking about that girl who was slashed at school. But I was distracted by the backwards and forwards of the camera all through the interview. I could have got sea-sick! I had to close my eyes to pay attention to the interview, which was in itself perfectly acceptable.

I have come to the conclusion that the newswall is too big (or they need to show a closer shot of a person standing in front of it). During a flyover, Francis looked like he was waving "Coo-ee - I'm over here."

Finally, re: viewing figures. If they are that bad, can anybody smell a humiliating climbdown? How long will they persist with those ratings, before making major changes and firing people?

I think it is too early to tell with Sky News' revamp. Viewers don't like change, and they are not finding the same presenters or look that they tuned into before. Remember, most people aren't anoraks, and so don't know about the millions Sky have spent - they just see something unfamiliar.

There were bound to be glitches in the first few weeks. That TOTH sequence will have to go after a while - the same people "running around looking interested in urgent news delivery" will look about as dated as a "Tell Sid...if you see him" British Gas floatation commercial from the 1980s by next month!

The problem with the newswall is that it is an LED screen. If you go much closer than they are currently then you see the LED structure appear and the display either starts moire-ing, or disappears into blocks. Ant'n'Decs Saturday Night Takeaway had the same problem with their LED screen - though they shot tighter and accepted the moire.