Sky News: Presentation Discussion

I agree. It seems strange that they've said absolutely nothing at all. And like you say, none of the presenters have mentioned it in tweets or even alluded to the fact that there's been a change. A few people have mentioned it to Sarah Hughes on Twitter and have got no response, yet.

Eamonn Holmes did respond briefly to someone,


http://twitter.com/#!/EamonnHolmes

Could it be for rehearsing those graphics they display in the space like in the elections for the Royal Wedding?

That response from Eamon Holmes would as I anticipated be that the presenters are as disillusioned by this change as the viewers.

Yep, that was my feeling on it too. Eamonn clearly not impressed and sounds like the changes aren't going down well behind the scenes either.

It's been an amazing fall from grace for Sky News over the past year, and I see this as just another example of that. The channel has peaked and overspending on things like HD has cost them dearly.

The executive producer/editor of Sky News at 5 has given what sounds like a pretty plausible explanation to someone on twitter,

http://twitter.com/#!/JDFWood

No issue with that if they are trying to emphasize a strong Sky News brand, it just the fact they are ignoring one of main aspects of the Sky News brand - their impressive presentation. As I mentioned in my previous post the standardised Sky News bulletins would be fine if they got the presentation balance in terms of the studio and camera angles right, I am not overly fussed about the programme names.

Also this from the TV Newsroom twitter account which backs up what the editor of Sky News at 5 was saying,

http://twitter.com/#!/TVNewsroom

Just got a tweet through from Mark Loebell at Sky News. Basically what people presumed Sky would say about the streamlining, brand emphasis etc is what unofficially, they are saying.
Eamonn Holmes also refusing to go into more detail, saying: "doesn't affect my work there.".

I know these responses are not the official line, but to me these just sound like excuses to cut back on production. If they are trying to cut down on the personality aspects of the programming, then why have they recently started two new programmes (Boulton and Co and Murnaghan) and named them after the presenters? Surely if it was not about personalities then these should have simply been branded as 'Sky News'?

Excellent point. For those interested I have setup a poll on Digital Spy asking the question "Are you more or less likely to watch Sky News following these changes?" So far 100% of responders have voted either less likely or no change. Still early days though with only 10 voters so far.

the voiceover doesn´t say :"live from the sky news centre" anymore. When they return from breaks they read directly the top stories without saying you are watching skynews, the time and good evening. Furthermore they don´t fix the camera to the presenter, anymore before reading the top stories.Everything seems to move faster and the connection between presenter and the audience is suffering under these circumstances

I never really saw Sky News as appointment-to-view news anyway, if anything the BBC News channel is more ATV than Sky News, with the 1, 6 and 10, and weekend programmes.

So what did actually happen for Boulton & Co today - was it Sky News with Dermot Murnaghan or from Westminster? And did News, Sport, Weather still go as a 20 minute bulletin or did we get Sky News with Martin Stanford?

It even seems odd saying "Sky News with.."!