Michaela Saunders bows out

One of BBC2's longest serving announcers, Michaela Saunders, has just announced her departure during closedown on BBC2. She'll be moving to BBC7 shortly.

Michaela's made a great contribution to BBC2 during the last 12 years and things won't be the same without her. Let's hope they're not replacing her with a trendy upstart from the Sky One/BBC3 school of announcing...

Here is a video of that particular close courtesy of our much missed friend tvmercia. He was ready and waiting for the close, as he is a very close friend of Michaela's, and captured it with style! I think we will all agree that we miss tvmercia alot - although you will all be glad to hear he is starting up his own forum, he tells me, which will be called the "asa is a packey" forum, which is destined to be a runaway success.

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Thanks for the clip, lets hope theres someone of an equally high standard to replace her.

Nice to see he's chosen to go out in a S-Club style exit.

http://www.martinsharkey.co.uk/signatures/martinsig.gif

Or god forbid, someone with a regional accent...

They're not replacing the six announcers who are leaving/have left with anyone - this is the result of the redundancies announced at the beginning of the year.

Oh, Simon, you are almost becoming a self-parody.

Just because someone uses ellipses in their speech, the odd colloquialism and may or may not have a regional accent does not mean that they are any less worthy than someone who speaks with a RP accent and uses words which have been in the OED for longer than 40 years.

If only Mr. Cholmondley-Warner were still around, perhaps he could replace her....



I thought tvmercia was back, and was calling himself Ian Shorting nowadays.

I've no objection to local accents, as long as they're from the Home Counties...

Oh, but what about the beautiful soft Scottish accent (I'm thinking female here), or the rich melodic Welsh accent? Or, the soft and sibilant mild Geordie accent.

We are blessed to have these accents. It's part of our heritage, and the rich cultural tapestry that is the UK.

That it may be, but that doesn't make it traditional as far as BBC1 and 2 are concerned.

True, but neither were computer-generated globes, balloons, Gill Sans, etc. It's called progress.

Some progress is good (balloons), some is bad (dancers), but progress needs to be there. Besides which, I'd feel a bit pissed off if my regional accent stopped me from doing a job for which I was completely qualified.

I think it's more the style of delivery you object to anyway, rather than the accent in which it is conveyed.

You might have a point there...