News At Ten Cock Up

Well I don't know how many regions this happened in but Granada News seemed to have started just before the end of the report about David Blaine's stunt, but there has been no apology for it starting early, has all this happened at Leeds by any chance? Or is this just Manchester?

Yeh happened with Calendar too, I just posted in the Yorks & Lincs thread. Thought somebody must have been a bit trigger happy, looks like they messed up the timings.

Then we had a Saturday night trailer before returning to Trevor.

Will have been the whole country - ITV News has set opt out points and particular timings it gives to all the regions - it's the fault of ITV News not sticking to their time ready to introduce the opt.

It's a clear disadvantage of having no flexibilty and not being able to contact the regions, telling them the opt out will be delayed by a minute or two.

YTV it seems as well. It's because ITV relies on exact timings for local opt outs in the ITV News. Really, if its possible, they should use the BBC system, which I think is listening to network talkback and waiting for an opt out call.

Indeed how bizzare!

So did it happen in London?

Surely even if the system relies on timings the regions could hold back a couple of seconds when it's clear the timings aren't correct?

It happened on Central aswell. The David Blaine report cut to the Central news studio, The presenter was watching the big screen at the time, then she realised she was on and started the bulletin. At the end they cut to a News at Ten screen which had the logo and the spinning wire globe. Then after a while it cut to Trevor who was reading his scripts, then Trev started reading the headlines and all went smoothly after that.

If any regions fail to opt out, is that what ITN put out, the spinning wire globe ?

You'd imagine so - but the timings seem very rigid...and I am imagine some are controlled by automation down in London?

Somtimes when opting out, you'll be left the the ITV News presenter sitting there shuffling their scripts for 15 seconds and then the regions will opt out - you'd think if a director is sitting there and watching that they'd use their common sense and opt out a bit earlier.

So I imagine a lot of regions are controlled by automation (in fact are the UTV, Scottish, Grampian and Central the only ones to have their own dedicated broadcast centres?)

The output from the National studio switches from the presenter shot to the spinning globe - I suppose this is just a fall back, and prevents you from seeing the action just in case the region doesn't opt out. Kind of closes the studio output in case a region doesn't break away from it.

How funny that YTV realised they were early and played a trailer, couldn't they have just extended the bulletin, there's usually an emergency story isn't there, that is used if a report fails

But it's the pres director, not the regional news director who handles the opt, unlike at the BBC where the regional news studio opts itself into circuit. I would guess pres won't cut to the studio early in case they're not ready, they'd prefer it to look as if ITN finished early and have them look stupid rather than cut to a regional studio which isn't expecting to be on-air yet and have the region look stupid?

Quite surprised that YTV managed to get a trailer in to fill though, I thought the automation system was quite rigid and anything not planned other than an ITV1 caption was almost impossible?