Daybreak - the launch onwards

Stories are covered out of the bulletins as interviews, VTs and analysis



Slow? Items are shorter than breakfast, and the channel has COMMERCIAL breaks.



I don't work on the programme.

The length to which you go to rubbish Daybreak is disgraceful. Mind you, your unbiased name makes up for it.

They have. Slight re-design.

There's a reason you do the job you do, and others do their jobs. And, that's not a snipe. It's easy to judge and make sweeping statements, but when it's different in reality.
Commercial interests, audience changes, audience expectation, physical limitations, budget are all things that producers have to take into account and balance.
BTW - no mention of the Jo Yeates story on either BBC or Sky on Friday morning. Here is why:


Court Reporting

A fundamental principle of justice is that it must be seen to be done. It is therefore established in the United Kingdom that with certain exceptions court cases should be heard in public. This principle of open justice is acclaimed on a number of grounds: as a safeguard against judicial error or misbehaviour, as a deterrent to perjury, to enhance public knowledge of the workings of the law, to assist the deterrent function of criminal trials and to permit the revelation of matters of genuine public interest. The principle of open justice is reflected in the European Convention of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The press has a special role in this system of open justice, as indicated by the former Master of the Rolls, Lord Donaldson of Lymington: "It is not because of any special wisdom, interest or status enjoyed by proprietors, editors or journalists. It is because the media are the eyes and ears of the general public. They act on behalf of the general public. Their right to know and their right to publish is neither more nor less than that of the general public. Indeed, it is that of the general public for whom they are trustees".

It is inevitable that in reporting court cases newspapers are attracted to the more sensational stories that emerge in evidence during the course of these proceedings. Another attraction to newspapers is that court reports are privileged against actions for defamation.

An element of chance undoubtedly determines whether or not some minor offence has received publicity as it is simply not economical for newspapers to cover proceedings in magistrates' courts to the extent that was once the case; in 1955 Lord Denning could write, "In every court in England you will, I believe, find a newspaper reporter". In many cases, publicity may still be part of the punishment delivered by these courts but the last Royal Commission on the Press believed that it was "highly undesirable for such a 'sentence' to be imposed not by the court but by chance or because the offender or another member of his family is newsworthy".

There are four main categories of exceptions to the principle of open justice:

i) The most serious exception is where journalists are neither admitted to the court nor able to report what has happened. This is the case where the court sits in camera such as in family cases or cases involving matters of national security.

ii) There are occasions where press and public are excluded, but an account obtained from the participants can be published. An example of this is the hearing for an injunction before a judge "in chambers". Such a hearing is private, but it is not generally contempt to report what took place. One exception is wardship hearings where it is contempt of court to publish any information relating to the proceedings.

iii) The press may be allowed access to the court, but be restricted by law in what it can report. For example, the names of rape and blackmail victims are suppressed in the interests of mitigating their pain and to encourage other such victims to come forward.

iv) The press may be allowed to be present but subject to a temporary ban on publication. Most committal proceedings (the preliminary enquiry by magistrates into whether there is enough evidence to justify a jury trial) are of this type. The 1981 Contempt of Court Act has also given courts the power to make an order postponing publication where this is necessary in the "interest of justice".

In summary, the press has an express right to publish in good faith a fair, accurate and contemporaneous report of public legal proceedings. A report is held to be accurate if its essence is correct even if not word perfect. Reports are contemporaneous if they are published as soon as practicable.


From:
http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=OTg=

And what lengths would those be, exactly? You could probably count all my Daybreak posts on one hand. And, are you sure that "disgraceful" was the word you intended to use in your reply above? Surely it's a tad out of context, no?

nope

I'm not saying I'm a TV expert, and it must be hard for producers to get right. But any half decent production team will take into account the opinions of the audience, especially on a flagging show. But ITV seem to have taken the view that Daybreak has faults, but they're not going to do anything about it and just hope that viewers eventually switch on. Audience opinion matters a lot, because they are the ones that decide if they watch or not. And audiences can make less clouded judgements about where programmes are good and bad.

I don't buy into your suggestion of limitations because the main criticisms and suggestions in this thread are what GMTV was doing for 17 years, and what Daybreak was doing in its opening weeks. Clearly the audience expectations are different to what the producers want to put out, but if Daybreak wants to be profitable then they need to rectify that and just hoping the problem will go away isn't the way to do that.

You might say that we all do different jobs for different reasons, but one thing you can apply to almost any job is if you aren't connecting with the target audience or providing a service that is wanted, then customers will go elsewhere. You may end up doing something you don't want to do, but its better to do that and make money.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard the editors and behind the scenes staff are working, it's simply not appealing to a bigger audience than BBC Breakfast. Defending every element of Daybreak vigorously isn't going to make everyone think 'Oh no, those people work so hard, we must all sit and enjoy Daybreak and think it's wonderful.'

Of course they work hard, that's why the formula and style of the programme changes so much, it's just a matter of them finding the right one that is an improvement on Breakfast and therefore gets better ratings. You can't possibly make out that Daybreak is totally fine when the viewing figures are significantly lower than it's main competitor. I'm sure the BBC Breakfast team also work hard to maintain their standards, it's not like they don't make an effort.

Just what is it about this thread? Guys, please curb the name calling and sarcasm. Both sides were making decent points before it decended into what it did.

I watch Daybreak every week day from 6.30am to 7.00am, and I will continue to do so because I like Adrian and Christine as a partnership, always did. I like to catch the news update at 6.30am and the 'TV matters' feature at 6.55am. I can, however, understand why the show is not meeting the expectations of so many that expected a more hard-hitting news based show than GMTV (as promised). Daybreak's lower viewing figures than BBC are easy to resolve, bring back the 5- a - day feature, more news stories and features instead of animal/pet features, but reported in a 'lighter' manner than BBC and I strongly believe there will be more viewers and criticism will die down.

The ITV1 beach ident was shown going into House Gift at 8.25am, probably a first during 'ITV Breakfast', I assume it was the same on STV and UTV?

I totally agree building on from previous discussion about a 'newshour' the show does need more agenda setting and news related features. The viewing figures actually speak for themselves for example with the exemption of the Bank Holiday Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday there was good coverage on the death of Osama Bin Laden but during the course of the week Daybreak when back to normal in terms of content.

Ratings for Last Week
Bank Holiday Monday - 400,000
Tuesday 3rd May - 911,000
Wednesday 4th May - 816,000
Thursday 5th May - 800,000
Friday 6th May - 805,000

These figures show when it comes to more focus on big news stories ratings can potentially rise.