Sky News

I have been annoyed by the excessive amount of US news being shown at the moment, but it does give Sky a very good excuse to simply put blanket coverage on and then sort out some of the systems in prep. for the relaunch - as they are rarely off air now.
So taking Fox News pictures for 2 hours solid may been (from the technical side of things) a very good idea.

I've seen very little coverage of the Belfast school problems on any network - simply because I've hardly seen any TV over the past few days.
I saw a report from Sky a day ago and found it to be the most hard-hitting of the main broadcasters.

Sky have been doing a lot of this split screen style of presentation over the past months and it does work very well.
It was used to superb effect during the elections, where they could show, say, Blair speaking at a conf. and Kennedy arriving in a town - then they put the Kennedy/Blair thing on Active and took the other one in full view - switching back to spilt to remind viewers it was on Active, a very clever way of doing things.

I agree - there's got to be a reason for them showing that car chase for 2 hours (other than the fact that they thought it was news), as it was completely irrelevant to people in the UK!

Maybe they're testing out the feed from Fox News in preparation for its permanent addition when the relaunch happens (though why they would need to put it live on air on the main service escapes me!). Or maybe this is a taster of things to come - a move towards the 'action news' style of US television.

Pesonally, I'd love to see Sky have their own chopper up in the skies over the UK like US stations have - The 'Sky Flying Eye' or something...!

I am pretty certain that Sky will get their own 'chopper'.
A Sky News helicopter was actually featured in the original 'Sunrise' trailer, back in 1989. I've seen nothing of it since!

With a name like 'Sky News First' the bulletins are obviously going to be mainly leading on breaking news etc, not on an overview of the news - which will probably be more interesting to watch.
CNN seem to do this now. It's breaking news for 3 hours and then they finally get back to normal.
It can be interesting to watch but if we're being realistic, it's just something to fill the schedules.

I think with more of the 'fast' news names like First and The Scene and Live, they will be focusing on the immediate nature of news and then should something happen they will break out of the news loop and just cover the 'breaking' news.

It does sound like another step forward in terms of news, not saying it's a good step forward, but I don't doubt that within 10 years the BBC will be doing exactly the same thing with News 24...

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see... Maybe the expansion of Sky News Active will mean that there will be more breaking news/in-depth coverage on Sky News, with Active featuring as a more high-profile source for other news - a bit like the difference between CNN and CNN Headline News.

A Sky Chopper would be great - they could send someone up to do travel reports during sunrise, a bit like the Big Breakfast used to do with Denise Van Outen (before she was famous).

Brilliant! Funniest thing on TV Today!!! And I think they handled him really well, in the circumstances.....

It was good to have a laugh after all the heavy stuff at the school.

It certainly was. Good to see Sky showing that they can be both heavyweight and entertaining!

Excellent, gripping coverage throughout the day from Sky News. Sky rang rings around the BBC.
Key to the successful coverage was the cherry picker with the overview of the area & the use of a remote camera with a microwave to capture the images of the kids & parents walking down the road LIVE. No-one else did this.

Also the LIVE camera at the school meant that Sky could do LIVE interviews not only with the parents but also with the distraught kids.

(Edited by SkyNews at 12:07 am on Sep. 6, 2001)

When the BBC built Stage 6 & the News Centre, they put a Helipad on the roof of it. The original idea was to either buy a helicopter or have one on hire when a big story broke & use Stage 6 as it's base.

To my knowledge, the helipad has never been used though.

The use of your own dedicated news helicopter is not as effective as it might seem, as ITN have proved. If there is a particularly large incident, ie a bomb, the Police can enforce a no fly zone so the helicopters can`t get near. The only stories where they seem to use the ITN helicopter are floods.

The UK is divided up differently to the States. Where all large citys have a helicopter, and they are always busy. One helicopter in the UK would find it difficult to respond quickly enough to news stories across the country.

Add to that the fact that it is illegal to listen to Police Radio in the UK. This is the way the US helicopter crews find their stories.

ITN have found that they use their chopper so little they have to rent it out to other companys to use, to help pay for it. The problem then is when you want to use it for breaking news, it is busy filiming flying shots of a new road for a building company or something.

Maybe SKY could make more use of it, it could be a shared resource with Sport. And they are the sort of channel who would really go to town with it. But as the BBC have shown, as with the coverage of Tony Blair going to see the Queen to call an election, if you want one you can hire one.

Goggle

I guess the helipad could be used to ferry in important guests if there's a civil disturbance etc.

Or to ship the News teams to a bunker quickly if Mr Sadman Hussein manages to launch a nuclear missile!

So who would they take to the bunker!!?... have you got a seat in the chopper as an important technical bod!

The Police in the UK are generally good at releasing stories quickly to News Agencies, so there isn't really a need to listen in to their transmissions.

The Beeb & ITN tend to share the helicopter if the story is big enough. There's an awful lot of shared resources within the TV business.

I think the last time the Beeb hired a helicopter was during the march through London where the crowd wanted a Greener Country and started attacking Mcdonalds etc. Robert Hall was in the helicopter showing us where all the hot-spots were.

However, this type of coverage is bad news for News Crews, especially the ones on the ground. The Police generally want copies of the tapes to help identify trouble-makers. Because of this, the crews on the ground sometimes become targets themselves.

The latest instance of this has been the Northern Ireland School crisis. On the second day of troubles, the Belfast FRV were in two minds whether it was safe enough for them to be in the area. They didn't want to go back in as the troubles may have jeopardised their own safety.