Continuity announcers reading the news

I just came across this video and it got me thinking about how often, if ever, CAs are given responsibility to read the news. There was an infamous incident shortly after the death of Michael Jackson when Channel 4 took a sketch show off the air, as it included a skit about him and, presumably, Channel 4 didn't want to be seen mocking a man who had just died. The CA hung onto a slide until they cut back to the closing credits, and poignantly didn't initially cite any technical difficulties, but simply apologised for the show "ending so abruptly," only later saying they were having problems with the show.



I remember people asking at the time why the CA couldn't explain what had really happened, with some saying that it wasn't the job of a CA to read or announce breaking news stories. Personally I think if the CA said "we were going to mock somebody who is now dead so we've stopped the show" people would've complained anyway à la Sachsgate. But in my opinion, reading the news is not the job of a CA. Yes, they've cited "recent events" or something while announcing changes to schedules or something, but rarely have I ever witnessed one actually inform the viewers of an event. That was until I saw the video above.

Have there been any other instances where the CA has had to take on the role of a newscaster? And do you think the idea of such a thing is wrong and should be left to the folks at the news desks?

Using continuity announcers to read the news was routine on many ITV stations up until the 1980s (and even early 1990s).

That said, certainly at Tyne Tees several of the announcers were trained newsreaders/journalists in their own right; Bill Steel for example had presented the main news programmes for several years in the 1970s.

That would not be the case generally now, however.

It was very very common on ITV for CA to read the news, in some case right up until the late 90s!. BBC Scotland had the CA read the late news at 21.25 until the late 80s.

I mentioned over in the UTV thread - Julian Simmons read the news as well as doing continuity during his early years at the station.

Didn't the BBC1 Wales announcer do "closedown headlines" over the logo of Wales Today until about 2001?

Granada did this until around 1993 for late night, weekend and bank holiday bulletins. So even though the main news operation had been moved to Liverpool in 1986, including the flagship evening programme, many shorter bulletins were by the continuity annoucners in Manchester; often with a chroma keyed background to match the current look of the real set in Liverpool of the time. There's even a video of Colin Weston doing one (think it's on TV Ark) during the era of the first Liverpool-based look (1986-7) with an image of the Liverpool studio and 'back tomorrow' caption at the end of the bulletin, despite him being in Manchester.

Around the time they moved the main programme back to Manchester (October 1992), the Liverpool studio started doing all bulletins (late, weekend, bank holiday etc), including an insert in the main Granada Tonight programme, which was becoming increasingly magazine-style in format. Despite the loss of prestige in not producing most of the flagship programme, the Liverpool news operation was probably more busy after this change. From what I know, continuity announcers never did any news after this point and invision continuity only lasted another two to three years.

Here's announcer Charles Foster doing a late bulletin after the News At Ten in 1990. The virtual background matches the style of the physical Liverpool set of the time and the titles are the same...

Over at STV one CA read the read the main evening news....

You used to also get the opposite situation, newsreaders being continuity announcers. The old hourly morning regional news updates on BBC1 being an example, where they would introduce their own bulletin over the globe.

marksi (of this parish) did an NI Breakfast news bulletin out-of-vision a couple of years back ago due to an operational error (the scheduled newsreader didn't make it in time).

It was done on LWT for many years as they had no news department. Very basic read of the news with no visuals except a slide with the weather on it. I think the news itself came from LBC/IRN.

That's part of the issue with an announcer giving news - its not the reading of it that's the issue, it's having the 'copy' ready to read out.

In addition to reading local news, I remember the Tyne Tees announcers presenting national/international news bulletins in the early 80s when industrial action blacked out ITN News one weekend.

What would have been a fifteen minute ITN weekend bulletin was typically five minutes of the CA in-vision reading national/international headlines (and possibly a few local stories) followed by a cartoon or similar filler.

STV CA are still seen invision on Monday morning doing weather.