Which is the best News Channel ?

Actually, those reports were from ananova.com not actually the Press Association. If you found them on PA that's because Ananova is a news agency with close links and whoever files the story first gets it sent on the PA news wire. Ananova's News Centre HQ in Leeds where I worked a few weeks ago has all the news channels on a bank of tv monitors. The one which the Breaking News desk has with the sound on is usually.... Sky News, but it does depend on the duty editor as some have no sound, some News24 and so on...

Where is PA news based? Are they still in London (close to Victoria station) - I didn't realise Ananova had moved to Leeds.

There seems to be a 7-10 minute delay on all the Ananova email alerts - did you discover why this was whilst you were there? Is it just because PA are only allowed to distribute them in realtime (via Newsfile, PA wire etc.) or is there a technical reason?

I wondered if all the stories were checked before publication - I also noticed that they do a find & replace on anything where it says 'PA News' and replace it with 'Ananova.com'.

William

I can feel the old example of my dad coming on again.

I decided to ask my dad this morning which news channel he prefers. He said ITN, because it's better to watch and looks very nice (yeah yeah, except the astons). He also likes Sky News, but he really doesn't like BBC News 24 because 'all of the colours look wrong'. Now, bearing in mind that my dad knows absolutely nothing about presentation, isn't this a fair comment seeing as most of these channels' viewers think like this?

On the subject of presenters, he could name several off Sky News and ITN (his favourites being Kay Burley and Daljit Daliwahl), but he wouldn't have a clue about News 24's presenters.

Oh, and I've seen pictures taken from ITN in The Mirror several times before now. Obviously, they wouldn't use Sky's because of their owners also owning The Sun, but it's interesting how they choose the relatively new ITN over News 24, especially seeing as this was last year when I first saw it.

The PA Leeds office is one of many throughout the UK. BTW, they have just opened their first US bureau. It deals mainly with sport, including putting together pages for the nationals. It is situated about 5 minutes from the centre, near the Hilton

Right, Ananova is no longer a direct part of the Press Association but it still has very, very strong links. PA's head office is in London but Sport until recently had its head office in Leeds and now PA Northern HQ is in Leeds.

Ananova is the new name for PA New Media and has always been based in Leeds. Ananova has a priority list for issuing news alerts... and the e-mail alerts take longer because they do the article, it goes to the editors (but editors right news flashes themselves) then to the content managers who post big stories on the site immediately (they are usually on site within 2 minutes of breaking) then they have to be formatted for e-mail and go to distribution which goes to make them take a bit longer...

In many cases Ananova break the news - I know I broke a couple of not so big stories when I was there and it was PA that replaced Ananova with Press Association when they went on their wire - as the co-agreement between the companies allows them to do.

Hope that helps! - any more questions just ask!

Sorry, it's just that I remember the PA changing their website to ananova and thought they were still linked. Thanks for clearing that up.

The arguement that Sky is a 'bit-player' is very false indeed.
I've been in contact with Mr Buerk at the Beeb over the past day or so and even he admires them.
'I have admired the Sky News channel for a long time, too. They're fast on their feet, they may have fewer resources but they are all totally concentrated on the one product. CNN I always feel is a mile wide and an inch deep, and ITN's news channel is pared down to a 15 minute loop.'

Sky News will never die, if only because it is the 3rd news source of the UK. It's actually quite worrying to think that the average person with a TV and radio can only recieve news from 2 networks, the BBC and ITN/IRN.
I doubt very much whether news channels are the future of news, Sky and CNN may like to see it that way but in reality people are still going to want to have scheduled bulletins, not sit through a 1 hour programme that is liable to deviate from regular news to go and cover a live event.
Sky will always be a bigger player than News 24, simply because of its global reach.
The arguement that news channels that people can trust, with brands that people can trust will take over the new upstarts (in comparison to the BBC and ITN, CNN and Sky are upstarts), that arguement is totally wrong.
It's been tried and tested in the US of A, where cable penetration is very high indeed. CNN remains the best 24 hour channel because it is only focusing its resources on one object, news.
Fox News is a new kid on the block, but having watched Fox News its coverage of events is similar to that of The Daily Sport.
Sky will continue to survive and I seriously doubt whether it would allow itself to become a 'bit player' especially after they have spent such a long time working on the channel to get it to the stage it is at today.
No matter how loathed you are to admit it, Sky is respected by both the BBC and ITN, and always will be for what it has done. And after all, where would the BBC get its pictures from during general elections if Sky News were to cease?
It's a respected brand, and in terms of the news channel war, it's still far ahead. It's still known to be the crisis channel, take the fuel crisis as an example. Ratings jumped on Sky whilst there was only a very modest increase for News 24.
It's staying as the top news channel, if only in terms of ratings, whether anyone around here likes it or not.