The Newsroom

Sky news Blunder(S)

Post them here! (July 2004)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
UB
Uncle Bruce
Has anyone considered that the footage may have been:

a, pooled

b, paid for by Sky

c, Sky material being fed from a BBC inject point

This really is an arguement over nothing - and for this guy to be threatening to go over it is amazing.

Can't believe he threw the Falmouth thing in too -- haha! I've met a few of your type in my years in broadcasting.
DA
DAS Founding member
Uncle Bruce posted:
Has anyone considered that the footage may have been:

a, pooled

b, paid for by Sky

c, Sky material being fed from a BBC inject point


Errrrrrr.... yes, actually. And now the guy's decided to throw a tantrum and leave. So it's finished.
UB
Uncle Bruce
Nobody has said it in the thread, DAS, which is why I say it now.

"Timmy" briefly mentioned feeds, but that's it.
PE
Pete Founding member
Also it's not as if it's never happened to the BBC. there was that rather odd bit of footage a while back from northern ireland with Sky News watermarked all over it that went out on all the channels.
TI
timmy
My point was thus...

There was a live tape feed of the rescued British Rowers being fed to news gathering operations across the UK.
It was being fed from a BBC source - available to all outlets; hence ITV, Sky News, BBC etc...
Sky News thought they would be all gung-ho and cavalier and take the BBC feed live to air.
Usually that's not an uncommon thing except one would have thought that Sky would have been slightly circumspect, as ITV and the BBC itself were, given that it was a regional BBC feed.
Of course everything that could have gone wrong, taking a live feed live -to-air, went wrong, finally ending up with the BBC logo appearing in 3-inch letters over Sky News' output.
I simply said "that'll teach them for taking live tape BBC feeds."

Er... mountain, molehill perhaps?!
UB
Uncle Bruce
Quite.
NG
noggin Founding member
DAS posted:
LOL, typical dirty tactics from the news channels! They will go to any lengths to get exposure of their logo on rival networks. And when Fox are so dirty with their marketing, you can't really blame CNN for giving it a bash. I like to think the UK channels have a friendlier, more professional relationship... whether that's true or not, I don't know! I'd say it is to a certain extent, but of course not always.


I think it is much rarer (almost unheard of) for a UK channel (terrestrial or satellite) to re-broadcast a rival's live off-air feed... This is much more common in the US - especially where local news shows are longer and provide more live coverage themselves. (Also it isn't unusual for affiliates of a network to also be affiliated with CNN AIUI)

In the UK it IS common for there to be pooled coverage, either where the event is routine (and duplication of facilities would be pointless), or where the media have agreed to minimise intrusion, or pool resources for better coverage.

In the case where pooled material is pre-recorded, it has to be played out from somewhere, and be routed to all pool broadcasters via some means - it is common for the BBC, Sky and ITN to route sources to each other for this (and the BBC have dedicated circuits to/from both broadcasters for this very purpose). Both the playout centre and routing arrangements are potential sources of disruption (say ITN, Sky or BBC colour bars or ident signals) - and often the pool playout is not under a great deal of control.
CH
chromakey123
noggin posted:
Both the playout centre and routing arrangements are potential sources of disruption (say ITN, Sky or BBC colour bars or ident signals) - and often the pool playout is not under a great deal of control.


You're right.
The main point of this whole thread is this:

It was a TAPE FEED of POOLED coastguard pictures.
All feeds have to start with bars and an ident so those channels taking the feed know they've selected the correct source.
In this case the pictures were from the best story of the day by far, were eagerly awaited by all newsrooms, and SKY quite correctly decided to put them straight to air.
That is the nature of a breaking-news oriented channel - they want to be FIRST.
Yes there was spooling, and yes the BBC logo ended up going out on SKY.
so what???
The channel breaks stories and wants to be first with great pix.
Viewers know the BBC exists.
Get over it.
While other news channels were recording the pictures, looking at them to check for content etc etc, and then giving the green light for the to be TXd, Sky was doing what it does best - being first.

18 days later

SN
Snu
A good one yesterday. Juliet Foster (who I find actually painful to watch in any case) was interviewing Fox Correspondent Amy Kellogg when Amy’s talkback failed. To which she replied to Juliet “We will have to leave it there because I can no longer hear you in my ear piece”. Instead of stopping the interview Juliet gallantly ploughed on replied something like “Good, if we could now focus on the issue surrounding…bla bla bla.” Even though Amy had said I cannot hear you. We were left with Amy staring blankly into the camera whilst Juliet spluttered her way out of the interview and into the next report. Nice one!
TI
timmy
Not so much a blunder but always amusing when Sky News boldly goes...

Story about former BBC Director General's latest attack on Tony Blair. The BBC and ITV News have been called the story DYKE'S MEMOIRS, or DYKE ROW or DG HITS BACK...

And then there's Sky News: DYKE SPAT

A Murdoch media outlet? Tabloid? Never...

One shudders to think what they're going to call the story about some guy named Annus being stripped of his hammer-throw Olympic gold medal.
JO
johnofhertford
Isonstine posted:
On a live a few months back, they were claiming to be in "HEARTFORD."


Now that really is shocking

john of hertford
BC
Blake Connolly Founding member
A little one just that seemed to on the autocue, about tonight's closing cermony: "The Olympics started as it began".

Only just got to read this thread, been.. interesting...

Meic Young posted:
Sky = Fox, no?


No.

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