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Continuity announcers reading the news

(October 2016)

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BS
Ben Shatliff
Mr Kite posted:
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...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gsxJKivoZw



The last continuity announcer reading the Granada News to my knowledge was March 1993 when on the Saturday of the Warrington Bomb John Mackenzie read a special update later in the evening. They also used an older music sting for this too.

But like you say when Granada Tonight moved to Manchester in October 1992 Andrew Britain was at the Liverpool news desk during the programme and presented the late bulletin from Liverpool too and the continuity era ended. Ironically for quite some time before this Andrew was continuity announcer and late news anchor from Manchester.
SP
Steve in Pudsey
It was the same in the BBC regions. In the era when they did regional continuity extensively the announcers would read the short news summaries, or a news bulletin component of the regional 6.30 show which often split off the news as a specific segment - a bit like the Moira Stuart era of Breakfast.

A classic example from Brum with Alistair Yates reading the news and then closing down http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/dsplus/m.php?p=bbc1midlands_closedown_1979.rm

At BBC Scotland, I think I'm right in saying that there was one announcer who was also a local Councillor, so because he had high profile political links he didn't read the news or give his name at closedown.

On the radio, Radio 4 still has newsreaders who are part of the announcing team, and until Radio 2 ditched its continuity announcers they read the news.

On a tangent, YTV's announcers used to read the rugby league results on a Sunday afternoon.
Last edited by Steve in Pudsey on 4 October 2016 8:44pm
RO
robertclark125
On youtube there is, or was if it's still there, two clips on one video, of the ITN and BBC announcements of Emperor Hirohitos death. The ITN bulletin, done through the night, was read by the ITN presenter on duty. On BBC1, the announcement came after a film o programme. The BBC1 globe came up, and then it switched to a slide, with a photo of the emperor, with the word "News Report" on a blue background at the bottom.

One reason why the BBC probably done it that way was, there would be no presenter from the newsroom on duty by that time, so the CA was best placed to deal with it. This was circa 01:00.
JV
James Vertigan Founding member
Andrew posted:
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.


There's an example of this from the BBC South West page of TV Ark recorded following the 1987 storm. www.tv-ark.org.uk/mivana/mediaplayer.php?id=04ddaa68d2b7c6c2552f5437b47bdddd&media=spotlightstorm1987&type=mp4

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


Yes there's a few examples on YouTube if you search for BBC Wales closedown. Here's one which includes a CA read weather forecast and also information about transmitter works for the following day.
JV
James Vertigan Founding member
robertclark125 posted:
On youtube there is, or was if it's still there, two clips on one video, of the ITN and BBC announcements of Emperor Hirohitos death. The ITN bulletin, done through the night, was read by the ITN presenter on duty. On BBC1, the announcement came after a film o programme. The BBC1 globe came up, and then it switched to a slide, with a photo of the emperor, with the word "News Report" on a blue background at the bottom.


That would be this clip:
WH
Whataday Founding member
I doubt the death of his successor would warrant such a news flash these days.
RI
Rijowhi
I personally feel that both the BBC and ITV are missing a trick by not pre-recording Continuity Announcements with some of their Region's faces/voices for their limited Regional programming. It would be a way of showing why BBC1/ITV are unique (though I admit they don't make that much Regional stuff these days...) without costing the Earth.

Does everything have to be some generic?

Before my time but didn't Mike Prince of ATV/Central/Big Centre TV fame present the News and be a Continuity Announcer?
RI
Richard
rdd posted:
I mentioned over in the UTV thread - Julian Simmons read the news as well as doing continuity during his early years at the station.

The other continuity annoucers still read the news. The last time Julian did it was about 10 years ago, and before that it was another 15.
WH
whoiam989
Whataday posted:
I doubt the death of his successor would warrant such a news flash these days.

Though, Akihito this year showed his intention to resign before he dies.
Arrow http://people.com/royals/japans-reigning-emperor-hints-at-resignation-cites-health-concerns/
BC
Blake Connolly Founding member
whoiam989 posted:
Whataday posted:
I doubt the death of his successor would warrant such a news flash these days.

Though, Akihito this year showed his intention to resign before he dies.
Arrow http://people.com/royals/japans-reigning-emperor-hints-at-resignation-cites-health-concerns/


Unlikely he'll be allowed to though. Abdication would require a change of constitution which probably won't happen because while a majority of the public support him having a bit of a rest, the government won't want to upset its conservative base who are resistant to any changes which might undermine the throne.

Anyway, back to telly, and yes the passing of Hirohito was much bigger news here in the west partly because of his longevity but mainly because of his role in World War II.
PF
PFML84
Richard posted:
rdd posted:
I mentioned over in the UTV thread - Julian Simmons read the news as well as doing continuity during his early years at the station.

The other continuity annoucers still read the news. The last time Julian did it was about 10 years ago, and before that it was another 15.
He still does the weather now and again though. I'm not sure, since he started camping it up for the Corrie intros and general on screen continuity, how suitable it would be to see him doing the news.
TC
TonyCurrie
For a very long time, it was part of both ITV and BBC announcer's contractual duties to read news bulletins. From the very start of ITV, announcers read the news and when news magazines became popular, it was still the case that an announcer would come into the studio to read the bulletin. That was the case at STV until long after I left. When I joined BBC Scotland, announcers were all bi-media and we did TV and radio shifts, the latter included reading all the news bulletins including the 7 and 8am plus the six and the ten. This changed when Radio Scotland decided announcers were no longer necessary. Given that the television Announcer-Directors in the Nations have a very much greater technical/operational workload now, it would be rather impractical to have us read news as well.

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