Sky News

I'm all in favour of Sky News' move to 16:9 for much of their output, but, from what I've noticed since re-launch, the rest of it isn't all that different, is it?

Okay, an all new studio, but the bits I've watched don't have an appreciable difference to the old stlye, in my view.

The only thing Sky News needed to change was the graphics and set, splitting up established & popular teams like Stanford & Etchingham or Thompson & Botting is a disaster. I think we should run a book on how much longer we think Rubin has got!

MEDIAGUARDIAN - Sky's spending spree fails to impress
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.

Not only do you not read Heat and OK!, but it seems this thread too.

Quite how you take: I do think Rubin will go, I hope they sort out the irritating triple-headed bulletins, that Live at Five stops coming across as the most atrociously produced and awkward-feeling news bulletin on TV, and that some news returns to the day time slots.

Whenever I've turned on post-relaunch they seem to be doing 20 minutes of news from the TOTH, then going into features and pap for the rest of it.

Releasing wild beavers, Kate Bush, book authors, Robbie Williams, boat shows, people in wind tunnels. Absolutely no relevance to the news whatsoever, and yet appearing before they've even got half way through the hour. It's almost as if on Today they get the 15 minutes of news out of the way, then breathe a sigh of relief and say ''right, enough of all that boring crap, let's talk about some famous people for a bit, shall we?''

... as 'fawning admiration' I am unclear, but don't let facts ruin your poor argument, as usual.

Interesting to see that Nick Pollard (Head of Sky News) is fighting back. In today's Broadcast Daily News mail-out he is quoted as saying that News 24 is tedious and stodgy, and has carried a string of inaccurate stories.

I suspect that there is likely to be a little bit of a press release joust between Peter Horrocks (New Head of BBC TV News) and Nick Pollard - as one thing that the BBC TV News operation have started doing, is singing their own praises a bit more in press releases.

There must also be a degree to which Sky feel they have to fight back - after a re-launch which is not widely deemed to have been an unmitigated success...

You can get too fixated on audience figures - and Sky have to allow time for their new operation to bed down, and they will no doubt tweak it to ditch what doesn't work and build on what does.

However Sky were always very keen to stress how far behind News 24 was, and how poorly it performed in the past, questioning whether the BBC should be doing 24 hour news at all etc... The current ratings situation can't be comfortable for them.

Funny bit on Steve Wright earlier on Radio 2 (I don't usually listen you understand!) when he mentioned the BBC's "beefing up of News 24 and slimming down on BBC One bulletins", and then went into a thing about the news channels. He commented that News 24 had gained thousands and Sky lost thousands of viewers.

As ever he was the corporate tart (not sure if he was tongue in cheek or not) and he called News 24 "excellent" and said he never watched Sky News much. His side-kick said he'd seen that Sky had relaunched but hadn't seen it much. He commented that Eamon had joined and that "some American guy who used to work for Clinton was on in the evening - don't know his name". Steve Wright said he wasn't interested in Sky and that News 24 was the one we should watch. "Trusted BBC News" he called it!

They then went off on a tangent talking about truck racing - "you can't get that on News 24 though can you?"

They're so against advertising at the BBC, aren't they?

Would be interesting to see exactly what Sky do with the channel if, in a few of years, they are still behind in the ratings by a bit, or slip even further down. If the Beeb are intent on making News 24 their main source for TV news (inevitable in the future that all news will be on the channel, and off BBC One/Two, surely) then Sky realistically could not compete unless they a) got a share of the licence fee for news production, or b) found the cash another way to improve their output.

BSkyB wouldn't sustain Sky News if it lost influence (and if it loses viewers, it would) particularly to the Beeb. They'd either have to pump even more money into it, and given that it's a total loss leader they probably wouldn't be too keen. News Corp don't like losing money - the only reason the Times is still going is because its readership is so important... just loses a sh!tload of money in the process though.

If by the time of the digital switchover Sky News is way behind News 24 in the ratings, it wouldn't surprise me to see them shutting the channel down. BSkyB is primarily about making money, and News was only folly and gave them some political influence. If News 24 has substantially more viewers that influence will fritter away and they'll be far less happy to keep on shoving cash into the hands of whoever is running it by then... way, way, way off though!

Far more relevant though is that if the figures don't improve within months (rather than years), Pollard will be out of job. New controller, new focus and the audience can come back. Sky know how to win an audience for breaking and rolling news- the move away from this in the search of a (in my opinion) non-existant audience is back-firing.

The key fact for Pollard is that you can't spend £20+m on a relaunch, lose viewers and keep your job.

I agree that News 24 will be the main home of news and that news on BBC One and Two etc will be the BBCs appointment to view news programmes - I would imagine that the One, Six and Ten would change substancally to focus on viewer stories and issue much like NewsNight.

As far as Sky is concerned, and where they have failed with the relaunch thus far, is that people don't know when they can see a full run down of the news on it anymore. The advantage that the BBC have is more channels.

It would be a shame for Sky News to be shut down, they have shown perfectly well, how they can compete with the BBC to produce news on a smaller budget, they just seem to have lost some focus and if it continues to fail (they of course need time to establish the new schedule and make changes) then they should simply revert back to a rolling news channel.

Big interview with James Rubin in today's Evening Standard.

The full text should be available on the blog of David Rowan (who wrote the piece) in the next couple of days.

I know you've been wanting him out for about a year now, but I still cannot see that happening.

The Beeb were reportedly going after him, and with News 24 looking to appoint a director for their channel he'd probably walk right into that if Sky sacked him... hardly an ideal situation for BSkyB, having an angry former head of news, who knows all your weak points, go and walk right into the main opposition.

Pollard has presided over the best years of the channel - award winning coverage of Louise Woodward, Kosovo, Iraq, Soham, Tsunami, and so on. His guidance has made the channel what it is.

It's only because he's in the job that they've managed to avoid going down the Fox News route - the crap about OFCOM ''not letting them'' is, well, crap - and returning to the days of the late 80s/early 90s when they had News Corp lackeys running the show. There is, frankly, nobody who knows the 24 hour news business better in the UK than Pollard, and to ditch him would be a huge mistake.

I doubt very much that any head of Sky News would have been able to do anything about News 24. The BBC brand is very strong, the Freeview effect has helped them so massively it is hard to quantify, and they have so much money at their disposal that commercial rivals can't realistically compete.

Sky news are currently getting mauled by News 24 on the Jordanian Bombs story- and I think it absolutely shows the key problems with the new Sky News setup.

The story broke at 7:30 in the middle of the Sky Report and News 24 Tonight- with Echingham presenting Sky's effort from College Green for the Terrorism Report. A bit useless when bombs start going off in Jordan and you've got no other anchor. Eventually Echingham had to hand back to the studio for a presumably stand-by presenter to pretty much take over.

News 24 on the other hand simply handed back from Sopel (next to Echingham on College Green) to Eakin and Hill in the studio.

Take note Sky- that's how 3 presenters can make sense, and yet Sky had just the one.

Then of course it comes to 8pm and suddenly even the Sky News gallery must be sh"tting themselves- major breaking story and Rubin has to deal with it. News 24 obviously roll with Jordan/Terrorism Bill over the TOTH....Sky go to ads (presumably because the studio teams have to change over??), and return with Rubin's "coming up" slot.

He fluffs it up and breaks nearly every rule of English grammar, but nothing new here.

Then the weather. WTF?? Two major rolling stories and Sky news go to ads, a programme advert and the weather? This is the kind of thing News 24 were doing 12 months ago but have learnt from. Sky have NEVER been this dumb before.

And no surprise, Rubin has to be rescued by a correspondent (the vaguely intelligent Emma Hurd in Jerusalem) on the breaking news.

Of course it doesn't help when your main rival has a correspondent on the phone from the scene of the blast (having been in the hotel at the time of the explosion) within 10 minutes and a further correspondent to speak to from the BBC bureau in Amman.

But hey, Sky have spent £20m on a relaunch (to f*ck up breaking news coverage) and have a correspondent on the hill in Jerusalem (seemingly covering "The Middle East").

If it was boxing, the towel would have been thrown in long ago.