BBC WORLD Mistakes

Stephen Cole's the only presenter on WORLD who's that entertaning but he does make his share of mistakes. Just yesterday after a report ended he was caught in the 'David Dimbelby at 4:30am on Election Night' pose - sort of slumped on the desk leaning on his hand.

And a couple of days before the Olympic announcement he said 'Tune in to a BBC World special on Friday to see who will host the 2008 Bejing Olympics'!

But the best one of all has nothing to do with him. In Asia in the mornings, Singapore adds it's own break fillers, because Asia has it's own schedule for the back half hours in the mornings (World Buisness Report & Asia Today repeats plus Asia Buisness Report). These are similar to the normal ones, except they are recorded and contain general highlights (and are written in Gill Sans). For those interested, I think the order is Coming Up (Weekday mornings), Coming Up (Highlights this month), Coming Up (Weekday evenings), News Headlines (About how you get the news every hour) and Coming Up (HardTALK). Anyway, getting to the point, on this month's one which they'll have to use until near the end of August, there's a typo in the 'Highlights this Month' page. Thing is, after all that, I can't remember what it is. I think it's 'oal' instead of 'goal' but I'm not sure..

Do you have any of these captured? :

Sadly not All my net access right now is through net cafes! I will have to try to capture some of the Asian BBC WORLD stuff, maybe a bit of Star TV too (recently got a new look, old logos were a bit like the '96 Sky ones, now they're similar but more futuristic and curvy, maybe the new Sky News logo will be like it)


http://www.startv.com/images/channel/channels_nphoto4.jpg
http://www.startv.com/images/channel/channel_logo/medium/sports_co.gif

BBC World do indeed get their fair share of mistakes. Its a great place to see them.

Well, I say bring back the World Today with Stephen Cole. News, Sport, Business and Weather all self contained in the programme. It was great and Stephen Cole made it all that much better.

Also, you fing regularly that the presenters don't have enough time at the end of the programme and have to rush in a 'Thats it for now.'

Because World is a commercial station, it has to meet junctions precisely, both for the adverts and for opt-outs.

It's virtually a daily occurance that programmes over-run but it's too late for those nice peeps in Presentation (Hello Andy! ) to stop countries opting out as it's all automated, and when the electronic signal is sent, it can't be stopped, and countries will take their own programming/ads at a specified time.

So that's why you might see the presenters rushing a goodbye because they only have seconds before they're off air


(Edited by techy peep at 10:38 am on July 26, 2001)

So if a dozy presenter isn't keeping his/her eye on the clock will the ads just cut them off?
ie: 'The next world news is at the top of the hour, but fro-Bounty the strongest soaker-upper, Bounty'?

No, the news bulletins end with the end theme. So all that would happen is that they wouldn't say anything at the end or they might get cut off in mid sentence.

BTW, if I see that Nokia ad, one more time I will smash my TV. BBC World have only 2 adverts, literally!

I can't wait to get BBC World again, it's been totally boring watching crap 24!

'techy peep' (hello ) is correct in saying that BBC World needs to keep to it's schedule. There are breaks and opts to meet, and importantly, some of the news bulletins taken by other broadcasters (e.g. American PBS networks) have to hit exact times. It can be a rush at the end of a programme.

However, in non-opted bulletins, news beg pres. for more time when they overrun (often with seconds left on the programme), and it's down to the pres. director to either allow/decline the overrun, or come to a compromise. The presentation director always has to make sure they can get to the top of the next hour, so can only give enough time away in order to do this. Lots of quick sums and no room for errors.

Though during rolling news, the whole schedule gets thrown out the window, and pres. & news are in constant communication discussing scenarios and plans. And of course, as soon as a plan is make and the schedule changed - it all goes pair shaped and the negotiations start over again!

I keep seeing that advert for BBC Prime, which if fine. At the end though, they say 'contact your provider for details on how to receive BBC Prime' which ALWAYS overuns.

It means that the countdown cuts in at 6 seconds, everytime this trailer is on before the top of the hour it ALWAYS happens. Can't someone load another trailer there that fits?

That's because he came from Sky News

It doesn't overrun - it's planned. Europe opts out for the back half, and then rejoins the core service during the countdown. Europe should rejoin core about 2 seconds after the countdown on core has started. But hey, what's another 2 seconds?

And just for the sake of argument, the Prime XPromo is 40' in duration, but you want to join core service 4 seconds earlier. How would you do it when you only have trails of 10, 20 and 30 seconds in duration that you could replace the Prime promo with? Come and direct for a day, you'll see things differently!

The answer: you do the maths and work out before the opt what time Europe will come back, and once the opt has started you get an exact time of it's return to core. You can then make adjustments if necessary. Most viewers won't care where the countdown starts, just that news starts at the top of the hour.