CNBC Gets a Bit of a Revamp on Monday

How silly of us!

Aren't we funny little things, us Brits!

Hmmm...

I saw the David Bloom live stuff - it was spectacular television - and technically impressive - though the groundbreaking bit was really in the integration rather than the individual bits of the technology. However impressive the images were - they only told a small bit of the story - how one unit was driving quickly across a desert. They told you very little about what was actually happening in big picture terms. (The BBC used a similar, analogue based system, during the Iran/Iraq war in the mid/late 80s - using a microwave link on a gyrostabilised platform to hop from a moving Navy ship to a land based satellite uplink - meaning material could be played out without docking or helicoptering rushes out, and also allowed live interviews to be done when in range)

The fact that no US News Network had a permanent presence in Baghdad for the second Gulf war is difficult to believe. How do you accurately report both sides of a war, when you only have correspondents on one side? (And how come Sky News, BBC News and ITN all managed to keep correspondents in the Iraqi capital?)

As for satellite and video phones - these have been in common use by all broadcasters for ages. Videophones were in use in the UK in the early 90s - and Inmarsat satellite phones were also in use by UK news teams well before the previous Gulf War - first routinely used in the mid 80s. (I remember the first time I saw one...)

However it is easy to point-score and tit-for-tat technology. What cannot be disputed is that, excluding CNN, US News networks have given up on international news in any serious way. They have almost no foreign news bureaux permanently staffed, and end up either running agency wire copy and pictures, or parachuting in correspondents with little or no local knowledge...

Compare this with the BBC, who have a huge network of radio and TV correspondents across the globe... In terms of News production - I think having people of your own on the ground goes a long way.

Sure pictures make Television, Television. However pictures don't make non-stories into News. Is it more important to report a story where 100s of people have died in an earthquake in an area with no easy method of getting pictures out (and can only interview a reporter on the phone), or to report a minor road rage attack that you have spectacular CCTV pictures of?

Very well put c@t. Sure broadcasters need to move studios - both the BBC and ITV have moved their news operations over the last 10-15 years. However when you trumpet that you have spent millions on a new building, but then continue to run down your newsgathering abroad - priorities surely have to be questioned.

I found US network news really scary when I was in the US recently - you really had NO clue what was happening in the world outside the US, and coverage of stuff within the US was also pretty scary. (How short and inconsequential are their packages? I'd swear some soundbites were only 3 words long!)

UK News is boring. They have not created or innovated anything so stop trying to say they have with your fake "recollections". You know and I know the Americans are usually on the forefront of technology.

CNN is and will always be the first global newschannel with resources and allicances that the BBC cant match. Why have a bureau in an area where you are already aligned with another network? Not cost effective. And many of you forget the BBC is paid by our tv license. CNN doesnt have unending resources. So their agenda is going to be different. If the American viewing publis is not interested in global news why spend the money to cover where there is not interest? ANSWER THAT QUESTION!
At the end of the day CNN MSNBC and FOX are businesses. The BBC is not....the BBC is government funded agency. We pay for that. So that means the BBC will be funded and have money no matter what the story is or interest from the public. The US networks are advertiser funded, if no one is watching they dont recoup the costs for covering stories. So how do you stay in business. YOU COVER STORIES THAT INTEREST THE VIEWER. At the end of the day it comes down to money. Hence the consolidation of resources and such. We may have better content but that is due to the money we are forced to pay. So that is why we get the stories we do because we are used to seeing. In America they've grown up in a entirely different model. They can't be demonized for that.
Plus the fact their stories are short owes to the fact American simply dont have the time to watch news. Most want a quick synopsis of whats going one. That is why news stories are quick sound bites. (I'm not justifiying that) But its a fact. They work a heck of alot more hours and days than most Europeans. And thats a fact. You cant have the worlds #1 economy by being stupid. And thats a fact.CNN FACT SHEET

Rubbish - BBC News is the world's largest news broadcaster, with 58 news bureaux round the world, and in addition to BBC World there is the BBC World Service and its various different sub-services, which I would imagine give the BBC a far greater worldwide reach than CNN.

You want innovation? Look at Sky News, their use of graphics, especially the newswall and the floormap. Same with the BBC and ITN's 3D and virtual graphics systems (although for news they aren't used as much as Sky use them).

Because the public (especially the American public) have absolutely no perception of "what's important". It is important if it relates to America, that's their perception.

Take Liberia as a case in point. None of the US news networks (again, CNN is an exception) bother to have correspondents anywhere on the entire African continent, and so the likes of Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, etc. are routinely ignored. Liberia, having some American connection, is suddenly a story.

There was practically no interest in Afghanistan pre-September 11, but I don't think you'd be in a position to dispute that what was going on in Afghanistan, before the attacks, would transpire to be increadibly important. The BBC had a permanent Kabul correspondent (Kate somebody?), Sky News had just returned from the country after filming an "Inside Afghanistan" special; and the US networks were nowhere to be seen. CNN did send in a correspondent just before September 11, but their operation was not permanently staffed.

And just as a final point - news channels have NEVER been about making money. They are broadcast folly, and nothing more. CNN did make fortunes out of the first Gulf War and I think Sky are now breaking even, but you are daft to suggest that a news channel is a business of any sort.

I'm sure you both keep tabs on all of the reporters from the US. Sure. Whatever!
As far as newschannel making money, how do they continue to operate if they dont make money? You still cant answer that question. No one said the sole reason they existed was to make money. You are daft to suggest that. I said they have to make money to operate. And they are businesses. The BBC does not fit into that category because they are essentially an extention of the government. NO COMPANY IS GOING TO THROW MONEY DOWN THE LOO JUST TO CLAIM "OOOH WHEEE...WE"VE GOT A NEWSCHANNEL!" Its quite obvious you know nothing about COMMERCIAL TELEVISION. Oh and LEE....get over it mate....the empire is no more.
I'm through with this non-issue. Totally off topic. You're wrong just admit and get on with reality.

Is there any chance that you might offer something in the way of reasoned argument, rather than this absurd ranting?

With regards to comments re: news channels and making money. You, my little clown, said "At the end of the day CNN MSNBC and FOX are businesses". Now, it is my understanding that the primary aim of a business is to make money; and looking at the context of the sentence, that was the point you, too, were attempting to make.

Why do they continue to operate if they don't make money? Well, I can answer your question.

Sky continues/continued (depending on the status of its finances) to run at a loss because it gave the BSkyB operation a certain credibility that, at the time, the rest of the channels did not. This is no longer the case, as Sky Sports has, to a certain extent, taken over the baton. It remains because it has the potential to be a very useful political tool that News Corp can wield. Same with The Times newspaper, which has been operating at a loss for god knows how many years. It is (though less now than ever) the Paper of Record; to close it would be beyond stupid.

And news channels demonstrably do not have to make money to operate. CNN did not make any money for the first decade of its existance, same for Sky News. They have to HAVE money, but they don't have to MAKE it; there's a difference. If a mogul (Murdoch or Turner, in the case of news channels) is prepared to stump up the cash (Ted Turner remortgaged all of his houses in the 1980s just to keep CNN on the air), then a news channel can be operating at a loss for many, many years.

State something factual about yourself c@t.

I'll choose to interpret that as "I've lost the argument, and now I'm going to act like a child".

See now you are learning mate. Good on ya