Sky News: Presentation Discussion

That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?

Sky News was never the same when Penny Smith moved to GMTV, Simon McCoy went to BBC News, Bob Friend retired etc. etc.

All great presenters who left Sky and to be honest all made their mark and helped Sky News to be my default TV channel. More so than Chris Roberts has.,

He's not an in-studio newsreader by trade though. He's one of the best foreign correspondents of his generation and when he is presenting/reporting on location, he is Sky News' strongest asset. In my opinion anyway.

I cannot think of anyone better than JT (when he's on location) in British broadcasting.

Graphics on SD were playing up basically for the entire Sunrise programme this morning, and broke down on HD occasionally too.
Jeremy is Sky's biggest asset, as is Live at Five. He's what makes Sky News great, despite Kay Burley's attempts to derail it.

I really like his delivery. Many British newsreaders tend to somewhat bland and forgettable; he stands out from the crowd and is generally interesting to watch -- the most important quality in an anchor.

Well that's a cultural difference between the UK, and wherever it may be that you live.

In my view, the most important quality of a newsreader is to be clear and understandable - and that is of far greater importance than their particular personality. The name "anchor", used more in other countries, tends to indicate that the focus is on them, more so than the content they deliver. Not something Britain really buys into.

Some may say if you want personality, hire a comedian.

I think that Sky could use more of the cameras, rather than keeping them still a lot of the time. Kay just handed over the business to Lauren, who was stood about 2 metres away, yet they didn't bother moving the cameras around to show both of them.
It would be much more interesting if they had the main presenter and the bulletin reader or business presenter interact more, or at least make the camera movement more mobile, which is something that they used to do in Sky News Today a few years ago.

Of course it's important that the newsreader/anchor/newscaster/whatever is clear and understandable. However, I would argue both that this is both A.) self-evident and B.) not at all in conflict with the newsreader being an interesting personality.

Just because an anchor is interesting to watch doesn't mean that he or she is inherently less effective or capable as a conveyor of information. In fact, I would say that the exact opposite is the case: Someone who is an effective, interesting communicator tends to have an easier reaching a mass audience and conveying important, credible information to people who may otherwise tune out.

Surveys around the world, in different cultural environments, show that typical TV audiences (not necessarily educated elites) do care about personality, even in television news. Of course, this is not a journalistic concern; neither is, say, the layout or format of your daily newspaper, but it still matters -- and television news is no different. If you have the chance to make your news product more attractive to a mass audience, witout compromising your journalistic credibility in the process, why resist it? Or do interesting newsreaders somehow make the news trivial?

Mind you, I'm not talking about the Bill O'Reillys of the world and others who may be "personalities" but have precious little do do with journalism. But take people such as Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Roger Gicquel, and, yes, Jeremy Thompson -- all interesting to watch with distinctive styles but still capable and serious journalists. These people are successful and stand out from the crowd because, their journalistic experience aside, their very different styles are (or were) all perfectly suited to the unique demands of the television medium and made them effective communicators.

Take away all traces of personality from television news and you are left with EuroNews.

Blank toth ticker still working and dog still there but completely white screen otherwise (3pm) I was watching via skynews website

Interesting TOTH at 15:00. It started off as just a white screen with the ticker and dog on it while the usual music played underneath.

I accept some part of what you say, as I wouldn't be much of a TV Forumer if I didn't find style to be at least an important aspect of news delivery.

But just as America tends to frame a presenter's eyes in the middle of the screen rather than the upper-third, some things just don't sit well with different audiences - and they don't necessarily have to understand why; just that they come to expect certain things as its been that way for their lifetime.

Gregarious personalities sort of comes under that category.

For example, Robert Peston, one of the BBC's chief financial reporters came under a certain amount of criticism during his reporting of the financial meltdown. Fascinating and knowledgeable man though I am sure that he is, his rather theatrical disposition had the side-effect of causing no small amount of unease with viewers who had monies invested - and in turn it could be suggested that he fuelled the run on the Norwich Union building society, by the somewhat OTT nature of his pieces - such as, "If it gets any worse, we might as well all stay under the duvet tomorrow..."

I think we're less used to seeing an editorial nod or wink - or even intonation of delivery - when it comes to our news, and that's something "big personalities" can be prone to do, in my experience in other countries, which to be fair has been little.

The reason why I posted my piece above was your statement that a newsreader should,



And on those terms I would disagree.