Sky News presentation - New studio onwards

Graphics that are barely more than a year old?

The graphics are the best part. This Sky look has really grown on me. Sure, the end of the top of the hour sequence could use a little more oomph, but I think it otherwise looks great. The custom fullscreens, video wall graphics, and the graphs/maps/charts are really impressive.

Well, it's all personal taste I suppose. You like the graphics, I think they're pretty ropey.

The new studio is well ropey, what were they thinking! I saw sunrise this morning and the loud paper reviewer sounded well echoey, the background is too empty and nothing about it suggests I am watching a news channel, and as others remarked no colour branding anywhere, to sum it off its poor.

It may well be one of those things where I react in horror when I first see it, and gradually get used to it, but I hate the new Sky News studio. It reminds me of walking into an office which is full of bureaucracy where I need to fill out a form for something.

I'm not sure why, but the BBC Scotland corridor-cum-studio which shows you a lot of the building - similar to what this appears to be trying to achieve and as used I think during the Scottish referendum coverage for network - works so much better.

I don't see what problem there is with the current graphics, okay, they're taking up more of the screen than the last ones and I think that the militaristic nature of the old ones was better with less screen cover and empty space on backgrounds, but I don't have a real problems with the current ones.

Still think the new studio is poor though apart from when it's using the big screen as a background.

The soulless look is a combination of sparse studio in an irrelevant location and automated cameras, controlled by the automated Overdrive broadcast system. If you want to know why Sky News has gone from a powerhouse in the 90's to a regional rip & read service today watch the regional US stations use it. When you have a soulless control-room with one person, you can't expect the presenters to show any hunger delivering the pre-determined template content. And you certainly can't expect one person to be across all of the news developments and video feeds without making on-air mistakes.

https://youtu.be/dOKjxAeRJjo?t=47s

vs

https://youtu.be/pbq1tyILIrs?t=28s

One fair point to Sky, although I dislike the new studio, is that the way we get news has changed a lot since the 90's. So are they just moving with the times, with these cameras and what not.

As someone who has worked in an Overdrive control room on a regional US station, I'm not sure what you're saying is accurate. I highly doubt Sky's control room today looks like the one in that top video, or that only one person is in Sky's control room. Our control room had three people in it — a producer, a director/TMP, and a master control operator, since our master control was hubbed. This was for a show that was ostensibly a quick, hard-hitting morning show with 2-3 live reports each hour. On some of our off-peak hours (midday, late night, and weekends), the producer *is* the anchor, so then there's only two people in the control room, but those shows are usually not more than 30 minutes and had at most one live reporter. In some really small stations or stations where master control isn't hubbed, then yes, there may be only one person in the booth. But what I'm trying to say is that our shows were still pretty simple compared to what's in an hour of Sky News today, where Sky still has a lot more live elements than we did and produces far more hours of live news than almost any local TV station in the US does. So sure, there might be more tech/directors in a Sky control room, and there's undoubtedly going to be at least 1-2 more producers/associate producers in there to coordinate all the live feeds, talkback with all the talent and photogs, and changes to the rundown mid-show. And there's still going to be an executive producer outside the control room overseeing everything — our anchors were our de facto EPs, which is pretty common for a small market in the US.


Also, everything is automated now, including the BBC. Almost everything. It's not unique to Sky. It's sad to see people lose their jobs, but it's a reality that this is the direction this industry has marching toward for the last three decades. Actual viewers don't notice, and for the talent, as long as there's still a producer on IFB bringing everything together, then the talent isn't going to show "any less hunger" to deliver the news, whatever that means.

That shot they use before going to a break after coming up of the studio is really unnecessary. We've often heard that Sky have toned the graphics down because they want it to be more about the news rather than flashy, the constant use of that shot contradicts that and totally undermines this argument that we often see here.

It screens of saying "what a great office we work in, look how beautiful it looks." which sums up a lot of my feelings about the glass box, they thought a lot about how it looks in their office, how beautiful it looks to their employees as a trophy to show off, how it shows their office rather than how it actually looks on TV for coverage.

At times it feels that it was designed to look nice and beautiful first and as a studio second.

That is totally what Im thinking. From outside in.... Its looks great. Inside out. Whew. Not good.

EDIT - post deleted, wrong thread

Gave it a week to let it settle down and try to get used to it but it doesn't work for me at all.

It looks as though it comes from a mezzanine cafe in a rather boring office block/call centre. Bland comes to mind.