BBC News 24 (last night)

Yeah I saw it last night. Here's a RealVideo version of it - I captured from the end of the previous trailer to the end of the first headline - all in all it's just under 30 seconds.

Here's the address:

http://members.aol.com/focusvid/BBC_N24_World.rm

Enjoy!

Mark Grindon

There was another mistake last night at 0400 - the first headline went all funny!! You got flashes of still N24 logos, an interviewee sitting there etc.!! I got it on tape so when I get my VCR connected, I'll capture it.

Hi. I'm new here. Have been pointed here by one of my collegues.

I'd like to put my hand up & say that it was me Directing N24 last night & the night before when mayhem ruled the roost!

As many of you have noticed, we were indeed in BBC World's studio on Sun morn from 0100 until 0530. This was due to pilots being carried out for the new Business programme in our usual studio.

Unfortunately, the BBC World News automation system which drives everything in the gallery had been altered to accomodate their UK Election coverage. As such, none of our computer commands would work correctly. It's unfortunate but unavoidable that we are unable to check these codes before we actually use them on the air. Hence the mess which appeared on the output.

The reason you saw the generic 'BBC News' caption and heard the overnight vamp at 0200 was because what we call the 'Grams Channel' did not run the countdown clock for the reasons stated above. (The same thing happened at 0400 too.) At 0207 the whole computer system, called Columbus, crashed and we were forced to run manually for 5mins while it was rebooted. Hopefully you didn't notice anything untoward while this was occuring.

Basically, all night we were fighting the automation system, and on occassions were not winning the battle!

This mornings incident (04/06/01) at 0400 was not our fault. We were hoping for a live headline from Peru. At 0359 the circuit appeared and we planned to use it as the top headline. Bang on 0400, when we cut our reporter to air, the circuit was removed externally of TVC. You saw an animated message with a telephone number to call if the circuit was broken.

Hope this helps.
Scott

Scott - r u working tonight???

If you are, please make it nice & quite. I want to have a kip in World pres. Better still, you could come round and direct it for me - I hear you are a dab hand!!!

Andy, unfortunately for you, yes I am on tonight!
But doing sound (yeah!).

As for dab hand at World Pres, errr... yeah, read Kens log for 0530 on Sun morn! Ooops

Yes, I saw that log..... Ken has a bit of a reputation for that kind of thing.... bless.
Maybe you should give pres. a call about a minute before the opt!!

when you guys are hard at work producing the news overnight what does the BBC World team do for 25 mins each hour? do they have a kip?

The official answer is that World Pres Directors are busy checking all the tapes for the upcoming programmes in the back half hours, making sure that all our 'partners' (companies who take BBC World) know what's happening with ad breaks etc., and checking which anno's to use from minidisk or sonnifex for the various programmes.

I'll let Andy fill you in on the rest

(Edited by ScottC at 6:16 pm on June 4, 2001)

Speaking from the World presentation view, normally setting up the rest of the hour. There is a lot of opts to sort in Asia, Europe, and America. There's weather, programmes, commercials and trails to check. And making sure that you can get everyone back and hit the top of the hour. And of course keeping an eye an ear on output and news talkback.

aaarrrrh you can answer my question. how does the BBC World advert filler work is it manual or automatic?

Will you be able to throw in any treats for us tonight, like the similar things which happened the other night??!!

I don't think it would be prudent to say how exactly it works, but it is automated.