Sky News

Yes, we TV viewers are fickle folk. We vote with our remotes if we don't like something.



Or even 1 night a week, which is a shame because I think he has enough knowledge to make him interesting to keep around.

I was thinking about this on the train today. Take The Sky Report and put it on Sky One (or Three), give it some serious content for a change. Maybe even put WNT on there too, and put Sky News back to what it should be.

Advantages:
1) gives Sky general channels some meaty content for a change.
2) The programmes actually aren't bad, but they should not have changed a rolling news channel to incorporate them.
3) Cross promotion of Sky News personalities on another Sky channel.

Disadvantages:
1) Pollard might still have to do a snivelling climbdown. No wait - that' s an advantage too.


WAS and IS. He made the channel what it was, and he is responsible for turning it into what it now is. Whatever possessed him to take a successful channel that was in need of a coat of paint, and destroy what he built up.


For someone who "knows the 24 hour news business better" than anyone, he certainly has (at best) misjudged the mood of the audience (at worst) completely ****ed things up.

Reuters and AP both operate TV News wires, that do provide some pre-packaged material - however they work significantly with other broadcasters, who share material with them. If they were competing news channels domestically then this might not be as likely.

Additionally there is an argument for concentrating on what you are good at.

AFP is slightly different - as I don't think it operates a TV news agency - it just provides wire reports. It is also not considered anywhere near as reliable as AP, PA and Reuters wire agencies.

Yes - the BBC have two receivers pointed at Hotbird that are usually permanently tuned to Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera.

I'd be very surprised if the 2000 show survived in its current form after tonights abysmal performance.

If Rubin can't cope with Breaking News, then he needs a co-presenter who can... Give him the set-piece interviews and think stuff that he can prepare for and has the background to be authoritative on. Leave the flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants live journalism and presenting to someone who can actually do it. You get the feeling he has never actually watched the news - he has none of the standard news phrases up his sleeve - which would be great if he had some better ones to replace them with... Not "err" and "umm"...

But given that it took him about seven years to get the channel to its current position - with and without APTV shows, it should be said - you're saying he's ruined the entire channel on the basis of two weeks output?

Rather than claim he's totally destroyed the channel, misjudged this, that, the other, why don't you wait a little while to give the audience half a chance to react to the thing.

The channel was not in need of a coat of paint. It was losing viewers to News 24 before it relaunched, and it has actually gained in some time slots since relaunch, regardless of what the Guardian put out. You seriously think that giving it just a new set and keeping everything as was would've stopped the rise of News 24? Come on, you can do better than that.

There are plenty of things I dislike about the relaunch, but I do think suggesting the head of news should be sacked and has destroyed the channel just a couple of weeks into a huge relaunch is a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

Yep. I think I have been through 4 revamps of Sky News, and have never had anything more than mild grumples about text size, that kind of thing. I have been there for all 7 Pollard years, and have pretty generally approved of a lot of what he and his team have done. Until now. It's not two weeks output. It is changing what the channel is all about. It's like turning on Eurosport and seeing they have dumped all the winter sports and motor racing, and replaced it with wall-to-wall golf - the programming may be fine, but it is not what the channel was.


I think they have already. Longer term, there may be further movement (in one direction or another). But that is a dangerous game. A Sky News viewer who tries another news outlet, and finds it is better, may permanently turn to that other outlet, and no matter what happens on Sky News, they may not go back. It's the old "they sold out of Heinz beans, so I got Tesco's ones, and they were OK, so I'm going to carry on buying them because they're cheaper" argument.


Do you honestly think anything can complete with the resources of BBC News, if they get their act together. ITN of 10 years ago might have been able to, but Sky did an excellent job with a significantly lesser budget than BBC News has at its disposal.

Anyway, I thought it was just loosing share because BBC News has a strong brand identity with Freeview viewers, whereas Sky News does not. I did not realise it was loosing viewers too.


Yep, it probably is a knee-jerk reaction. Somebody has to pay....

Do you think I can sue them for emotional distress? I am also suffering from a bad case of Botting withdrawal you know.

Seriously, though, I do get annoyed at these TV executives who change things because they haven't changed them in the last 2 months. It is OK to leave things alone. It is OK to do minor tweaks. Change by itself is not good. Change for the sake of it is even worse.

Yes they seriously got to get rid of James Rubin, he really is not cut out for live news whatsoever.

Not sure they should get rid of him - maybe recast him in a different role - such as a once-a-week interview show at the weekend, like a weekly HardTalk or Frost kind of show?

If they wanted another American, i guess CNN's Anderson Cooper would be excellent on Sky's World News Tonight. He is leaving CNN aint he?

Hasn't James Rubin presented Hardtalk before, I think he has, but can't remember.

Erm, sorry, she is a reporter. Her job is to report the news. She works for an international news organisation.

Do you not think, therefore, that she might've phoned up and mentioned that a bloody great bomb had gone off in her hotel relatively swiftly (given this is her job, and she is on standby 24/7/365) after the event, rather than not getting on air for about half an hour after the event.

It's not noble, it's what she's employed to do. If I were a BBC News hack, and knew I had a reporter available there and then who witnessed the incident I'd rather expect them to tell me about it ASAP, not in half an hour's time when Reuters have already done it for me.

If she didn't have the technology to do so, fair enough, but I imagine she carries a phone with her everywhere. She is an excellent reporter generally, from what I have seen of her in Iraq, but it does rather bring into question the system of production at the BBC when they have a correspondent witnessing an event and yet still rely on a wire service to report it.

No, he's not.

In fact, he's just had his show extended to two hours and moved into a better primetime position.

You might be thinking of Aaron Brown, who he is replacing. I've never really warmed to him as a presenter, but compared to Rubin he has all the warmth of a nuclear fission reactor.