Sky News Thread - Relaunch on Monday

No, they were just having lots of problems at the pres end. The Bolton Factor had a prettty bad sound & picture quality at times and one commercial break froze and eventually crashed into Adam reading the headlines, where he stumbled and started again.

I had to be up fairly late last night, the DOG and clock kept disappearing and reappearing all night until they eventually switched to the international feed (with the empty blue bar at the bottom of the screen) for a while so they could fix whatever the problem was.

What on earth are they doing leading on the - very limited - developments at the Jackson trial?

There is a general election, a bomb at the UK consulate, and they plumped for that one?

Jesus.

Perhaps they are making good on their pledge not to pump out 100% blanket election coverage this time round......

That is understandable at any other point, but on election day itself...

I appreciate there is little for them to go on other than ''people are voting'' but a general election day really does deserve top story status, and not to get bumped off in favour of Jacko doing precisely nothing.

Yeah, they've been devoting very little time to the election all day. Admittedly the rules on what broadcasters are allowed to do while the polls are open are very tight, but I'm sure they've done more before. The last election I saw on Sky was '97, Bruce even did special top of the hour voiceovers - "Sky News with Martin Stanford and Lisa Aziz... on election day!"

Aaand.. 23 hours later, we're back to normality. Of sorts. After an hour at Millbank for the Boulton Factor, Sky News is back in its regular studio.

Jenny Percival is reporting from Downing Street - I don't remember having seen her last night or throughout the day today. Has she been kept on the 'B' team, or was I just not paying enough attention?

I imagine, like Jon Craig, Glen Oglaza, and the rest, she will have spent the night talking to top officials from the parties and feeding that back to Sky. So when they were saying things like ''we are hearing rumours that X seat has gone to Y party'' the rumours will come from those correspondents.

As June now sounds like the month for the relaunch, making it about 3-5 weeks away, there's not long to wait.

Everything I've heard about the studios has been positive, with comments from ''huge'' to ''stunning'', so presumably we're going to be pleased with it.

Anyone care to offer any predictions about the new evening line up?

My guess is that there will be:

- a political show - a la Boulton Factor - in there somewhere, but presented by whom?

- Some sort of Hannity and Colmes effort, though in fairness to Sky, Hannity and Colmes is actually based on an old Sky News show: ''Target''

- I cannot imagine a business programme, because it'd probably be such a turnoff

- Perhaps some sort of interactive show, like Your Call used to be, but with a top guest? Sort of gig that Kay Burley would probably get.

As I've said before, I'm pretty indifferent to BBC and Sky, but I usually end up with Sky on as it just seems better to have on in the background - more watchable I think.

As a politics student, who obviously likes elections, I am kinda glad it's over now. Good to see 'normality' again - a nice full length ticker on Sky and - although it was only away for a few hours - I missed the Newswall in the background.

It's almost like when you take the Christmas decorations down.

Which in turn was a rip off of Crossfire on CNN

True to an extent, and certainly the name was similar, but Target and Crossfire were slightly different.

For a start, Target actually had politicians presenting it, whereas Crossfire was just 'commentators', and the formats were different too. But the basic concept was there, yes.

Target ran for a very long time (1989-1998, I think) and they took it around the world too. Would be interesting to see something vaguely similar come back.

Do we know Sky News will introduce the new-look.?.

Do we know Sky News will introduce the new-look.?.