I will, but they have already got rid of (or sidelined) the people. They have already moved Anna B. They have already hired two no-talents from the BBC and one from GMTV. Damage is done.
What made them think they needed to drop rolling news? If they did, why not to Sky Headline News, either as a channel or on Sky News Active.
Personally, I think that Sky News is doing the right thing by going back to having programmes and segments - something they ditched in favour of plain rolling news at the last relaunch in 2001, and IMO, has never really worked as a 24/7 feature. Over the past year, I haven't really watched as much as I used to because the format has been stale, even with the liveliest combination of presenters.
Okay, news channels strictly speaking aren't supposed to be watched all day every day, but when I first became a Sky News viewer, it was those little programmes and segments that got me hooked into the channel for long periods of time, especially all those shows they used to do at the weekends. I for one, am overjoyed at the return of a Technofile segment presented by Martin Stanford.
Presenter-wise - yeah, I think a lot of people, whatever their preferred news outlet, will admit that it can be gut-wrenching when your fave duo is no longer there to bring you the news and a bit of entertaining banter. I still miss certain presenter pairings that have been over for years. I have learnt to enjoy certain teams whilst I can, as they do not last forever - the most recent set of long-term pairings at Sky did well to last as long as they did. The world evolves, and news channels evolve with it - much as sometimes we'd like things to stay the same.
I must say the new set has grown on me alot over night - I especially love that new newswall and the fact it doesn't have any dividing lines or anything to distort the images put on it..
You can clearly see the squares that make up the newswall in some of the publicity shots, whether these will be visable on screen is yet to be seen. However, it's odd that you can't see similar "joins" on the screen Barco provided for the London Stock Exchange (although I admit it is significantly smaller!)
The squares on the LSE screens are pretty easy to see.
You have to remember that Sky's screens are a lot smaller than the LSE screens too because, paradoxically, the newswall is bigger.
Sky needed lots of tiny squares so that the thing could curve around smoothly - you couldn't have that with lots of massive squares, it'd look odd - so there are more screens and perhaps that's why you can see more joins. As it is, I think it looks damn good.
Isn't the LSE screen a matrix of projector cubes (as is the current Sky Newswall) rather than an LED screen (as the new Sky Newswall will be)?
LED screens are used on things like Ant n Dec's Gameshow Marathon, and Sunday Grandstand used them for a while as well. The Nasdaq wall (outside the building - not the studio wall which is cubes) and the coke advert in Picaddilly circus are LED based as well ISTR.
They are brighter and thinner than projector cubes, but they are much lower resolution in their core imaging, so work better at a distance than close-up. They are also quite noisy - as they have to have quite a lot of fan cooling, and if you run them at high brightness levels they often need to be cooled with liquid rather than just by blowing air around them.
The joins between tiles should be less visible than the current News wall, but this can alter with age, and also it is not unheard of for the LED tiles to fail individually, leaving you a dark or bright square in your screen.
To be fair as well, it's not as if Sky News will suddenly become a channel full of seperate programmes. They will all essentially be rolling news, except with the odd report from a different angle, or interviews with those relevent to particular stories. Not a million miles away from right now, really. The arrangement of the schedules is very clever as, rather than stale constant news, it is constantly fresh and new opinions are constantly heard. It is most definitely the right direction in my opinion.
Aren't 2 presenters leaving, if they have said they are leaving, can you blaim sky for looking to hire replacements?
Perhaps they saw the writing on the wall? Jumped before they were pushed. Lisa Aziz has only been on Sky News for a decade or so.
Katnap posted:
The world evolves, and news channels evolve with it - much as sometimes we'd like things to stay the same.
Sometimes though, change is not necessary. ITV1 is not loosing viewers because their idents are naff, they are loosing viewers because their programmes are, so .... they change the idents. Good call.
The same is true for Sky News. Change as in the new studio is fine. But why draft in old news 24 presenters or GMTV renegades with no news experience, when you have plenty of talent anyway, and most of it being pretty good too?
Believe it or not, it is OK not to change things. The world will not end. Someone needs to tell Nick Pollard that.
