I was flicking through the Sky channels this evening and noticed that the announcements on BBC1 England, BBC1 Wales and BBC1 Scotland were almost identical on every occasion. Do they have a script to read off as I thought that they spoke naturally.
If I remember rightly (and anyone who knows better can correct me if they wish) every announcer in each nation is given the network script, which they can deviate from if they wish. The best example of this was recently when a rather risque announcement was read by network plugging a BBC2 programme - this was ignored at least by Wales and Northern Ireland.
Nations can access network scripts - whether they choose to read them without changes is up to the individual director. Often there is no choice - the network script may be pointing programmes that are being timeshifted, or there may be a more obvious choice of programme to promote in any particular Nation. There's also the issue of style, where the network announcer's style may be very different to that of the directors in the Nations. Another factor is that the announcer in London's main role is to write and read scripts - the Nations' Director/Announcers have a much wider range of things to look after.
On Friday nights at the moment BBC ONE Wales and Scotland (and maybe NI) pretty much stick to the network schedule, so there are fewer changes that need to be made to the script, although as Mark says, often the announcer/directors in the nations will choose to make changes for stylistic reasons. If you tune in on Tuesday night for example you'll find more differences to the schedules and therefore more changes to the announcements.
At the end of that Rolf Harris art programme, the Scottish announcer told us the paintings were currently being exhibited in London.
Oh great, I'll just nip down the road then...
Some people do travel you know. In fact it takes less time for me to get from my house to central London than it takes for most people in the midlands to get there. I'm 20 minutes from Belfast City Airport where there are excellent, frequent services to Heathrow, Gatwick and London City.
Fair enough - and it may be a pedantic point from me - but it's hardly a pop down the road, and I can't help thinking BBC Scotland would have been better promoting other programmes rather than art that 1% of the audience will be able to travel to.
