Could classic Presentation come back into use?

I'm pretty sure that it's a combination of both. A clock today would be out of place amongst all the other face paced, music driven bits of continuity, and very difficult for the marketing departments to get their brand across. At the same time, there would be complaints about the accuracy of the clock, along with comments on twitter and facebook every single day from people who noticed that the clock on their freeview box upstairs is faster than the sky box in the lounge. People in this country love to have a good moan about inconsequential things.

It would be interesting to see someone mock up a junction into the ten with a silent clock though...

With respect for your vast knowledge and experience of broadcasting, noggin, I don't agree with that point. The more I've seen of television 'behind the scenes', the more I've come to realise just how fake it is. Everything from presenters feigning interest in guests to the ITV News virtual reality set where nothing except the desk is real. I'd argue that every broadcaster - the BBC included - broadcasts elements it knows to be fake every day. I don't think a clock is going to push it over the edge.

Why would a clock have to be silent? It could have some backtimed music much like a radio TOTH jingle or the news channel countdown. It would have to be something appropriate of course, but it could be done.

I understand that people don't agree with me - but I can see a clear distinction between artifice and TV grammar (asking questions that you already know the answer to is an obvious one...) - and broadcasting something you know is simply wrong and can never be correct.

Virtual reality is a way of visually generating something that isn't there to tell a story better or in a different way. A clock, with a second hand, broadcast on a system that can introduce massive amounts of delay and can't be seen accurately by a single viewer is just wrong.

And the number of complaints would just get boring very quickly.

We've still got DOGs. But those are for the broadcasters' benefit so the complaints are ignored.

I don't understand this figure of 20 seconds that seems to be pulled out of thin air. I'm not trying to be rude, but I can't think of a situation where that would be true (excepting internet streams): unless I'm missing something.

20 seconds is a worst case, but entirely feasible possibility. Long GOP compression - particularly modern H264 encoding - can introduce pretty significant delays in both encoders and decoders. As encoding becomes more complex, the delay through the chain is increasing. In some regions there are potentially three Long GOP code/decodes in the viewer chain. A 5" code/decode delay is entirely realistic with modern encoding techniques.

I actually liked the clocks... not as a bang-on accurate and necessary method of getting the time, but because they allowed for a more serious intro to the news.

I did mock this up a few years ago when I was learning how to use some of the more advanced bits of the Quantel editing system


I know I've got the keying slightly wrong on the BBC South logo...

funny you should put that one up....

Something like the BBC News countdown already has the equal potential to mislead - people see it counting down at the TOTH and when it hits 10" the 'pips' come in - with their strong connotation of accuracy to the second. Nevertheless, it is used on-air.

Then, there's no merit in the 'cannot broadcast if incorrect' argument because that's already been allowed to happen when the clock was in use.

The point remains that it is not the purpose of the clock to be accurate, and never has been, but if there is a genuine issue with showing the seconds (as seems to be focus here), then as a last option, remove the second hand...

...In that case, what is the result? At-a-glance it will be no less accurate than any of the clocks seen on-screen today. But, second hand or not, it's still going to hit the minute and hour with the same delay as every other TV clock already being used. Sorry, but this is why the delay argument simply does not stand up.

Further, if complaints about delays were really of such great volume and annoyance to actually prompt change, Breakfast, Daybreak et al would have had to remove theirs - and yet, they quite rightly persist.

With respect, this all sounds like a rule for one and a rule for the other, or it's making excuses when the clock is more likely to have not been considered for presentation reasons, as was the original reason for its withdrawal.

Someone should tell ARD...



(Yes, it's a digital clock, but surely the same point applies?)