BBC Two Closedown

--- see below ---

See the first paragraph of p_c_u_k's reply.

There are no recorded announcements in the BBC Nations. After all, there would have to be a director there to play a recorded announcement, and if the director is also the announcer, there'd be little point in recording one.

And Simon, no one is "forced into" any corner, there could have been a testcard, a slide, or black and tone.

Owing to the age of the Ceefax generator it almost wasn't Ceefax.

London take note! There's no reason why the network annos don't do their own directing (after all, they did once do their own mixing).

The first two would be fine with me!

Looking at last week's schedules, Chucklevision was billed for 7am on CBBC. Is there a rights problem in the nations, if not why the opt-out?


I thought as much - judging by the page transitions it looks like the same model Granada was using for Jobfinder in 1995. But they blacked out the header (and fastext if it was there) and keyed the pages over a blue gradient background. Then there's the lack of red text.

Although on Wednesday, Scotland produced an identical generator for about 10 minutes, only theirs could do red text. Then they switched back to the London generator - strange...

I was pleased to see Self Portrait used into Ceefax. It wasn't one I was expecting at all - I thought that we'd have Bounce Sombre or Fish.

Exactly how would they count into the programme if they were also announcing....?

That thing news have with Fiona Bruce's voice on it?

Yes, you could fully automate it but:

a) that's not the announcer directing, and

b) given recent experience of the all singing, all dancing, completely reliable automation.... well, forgive me for being cynical!

To be honest I've never been much of a fan of the CBBC programming on BBC2 during the weekdays. I remember the good old days of BBC2 when they used to treat viewers to a run of morning films during the summer holidays. Granted though, BBC2 have at long last reserved a film slot most mornings at 10.30am, but I still say they are showing far too much CBBC programming at the moment.

There was no pages from ceefax tonight, just BBC News 24 at 1:00am. I honestly think that BBC2 should closedown for the night and put all it's educational programmes on a new digital channel.

A lot of it could actually be shown in the daytime (namely the schools output). But instead, they choose to show repeated CBeebies material or repeats of The Munsters.

However, to hive off schools to a specialist channel would discriminate against half the potential audience (ie. those without digital). Until then it shouldn't be considered.