Local news mistakes

Well, it's true of BBC News and it's true of ITV continuity.

You can have good presentation or cheap presentation.

The companies should take note of this next time they spend a fortune on improved news-gathering facilities or fancy new idents.

If your presentation looks like crap, it matters not what you use.

Talking of regional news mistakes, HTV West news is a complete mistake full stop, but Points West went through a stage in a few weeks of constatly forgeting the baloon at 630, so when the headlines started, the baloon stayed on.

HTV were amazing when they first had their digital playout kit put it. There's one infamous 30 minute bulletin where barely any of the VT's fired ... at one point ...

Presenter: 'Here's the sport with Matt'
Sport: 'Blah blah blah ... here's a story about rowing'

(VT shows kittens)

Sport: 'Ah ... that's obviously not the right report'

(Sport and presenter gabble)

Sport: 'Okay, I think we can bring you that rowing report'

(kitten appear again)

.... and so on. They tried THREE times to get the report, and kept getting kittens. I laughed so much I almost puked.


By the way Tom ... Points West play the Balloon symbol from Beta Someone obviously forgot the play button.

Ah, you've all brought up a hot bed of nails here...

What if (never mind if, it WILL happen) LDN fall off the air & need to go back to Network?

At the moment, UK Today sustains the Network. Come January no more UK Today. Southampton & Tunbridge Wells aren't immediately available & circuits need to be established, so what are LDN going to do? Maybe they'll need a perminant feed of TW to cut to.

What used to happen in the days of Newsroom South East with no UK Today?

Cheers, Asa

NSE were the sustainer for Network.
It was unlikely for NSE to fall off the air as they were fully crewed and would have something they could go to, but Southampton would be made available & cut to Network by NC1 if they couldn't continue.

My point is that crewing levels these days are very tight, and with automation systems slowly becoming the norm, falling off air will inevitably happen more frequently

N24 don't generally fall off air despite using the same technology at LDN because they have the capability & resources to generally get around an automation failure. LDN & TW unfortunately don't.

(Edited by Techy Peep at 7:37 pm on Nov. 25, 2001)

HTV News on HTV West is an complete mistake LOL

NR Southeast used to be the default BBC News Region. I remember once the first 2 mins of Wales Today was showing NRSE. Thats going back about 7 years though.

Surely the greatest local news mistake is the upcoming Hull version of Look North?