'And the winner is....'

Very frustratingly whoever is directing the Oscars presentation keeps leaving the mics down when Glenn Close and Donald Sutherland are introducing the host or the award reader, all we can hear is the sound via the auditorium mics.

I'm not a regular Oscar watcher - is this usual or a one off cock up?

Other than that the presentation seems quite slick, even Johnathan Ross seems to be on his best behaviour.

The speech by the guys who won Best Sound Editing was pretty muffled.. which was nice.

On the whole, really good presentation in the program so far, but then again, ABC will want to do their best - did they really say a billion people watching, or is my sleep-deprived mind making numbers up now?

Shame Christopher Price hasn't made an appeareance on the BBC bits, but I'm sure I'll cope without him

Also heard it switched over to BBC One at 5am - how was it done? End of News 24, ident, Oscars??

Don't quite know who's bright idea it was to schedule BBC Learning Zone in that 1hr slot 5am-6am. Surely they were forward thinking enough to realise it would probably overrun?

I feel sorry for anyone videoing it...

Cheers, Asa

Did you not see the 'pre-game' on the Red Carpet. That was the biggest screw up I have seen since ITV Digital. The sound mixing was all over the place. They failed to fade up the proper microphones, failed to fade down the music properly. Presenters handed over to the wrong package. It only started to come together in the last 10 minutes. And then in the ceremony proper, Donald Sutherland and Glenn Close may as well have not been there since more than half of their comments were audible. You had to guess who was coming up to present an award, just awful.

The BBC didn't get away from mistakes either. Jonathan Ross's microphone was left open far too long on many occasions, but i'll forgive them because they seemed like a class act compared to ABC.

The switch to BBC1 confused me completely, the ABC coverage went to a film clip and BBC 2 went to a trailer and then a rundown of learning zone - I nipped to the loo and when I came back, LZ had started on 2, took me a few seconds to realise what was going on, then I switched to BBC1. If there was an onscreen caption telling viewers to switch, I didnt see it.

I would have thought that they would have cancelled Learning Zone but they didn't. Probablly as GCSE Bitesize that would have been on has moved to Next Saturday at 1.00 and they nowhave no extra time. I don't see why they didn't put it on one. In Radio Times it said Programmes may Change or Run late but they didn't.

As for the Sound, it was dodgy, that's probablly why Jonathon Ross was abit shocked when he saw Glen Close before the first 'break'.

BBC1/N24 was end of Hardtalk then weather then generic N24 ident like at usual closedown then BBC1 Balloon with anno which ran for it's full until starting again then oscars started again.

Stu <watched most of the oscars>

I know, the Oscars ALWAYS overruns!!! They should have scheduled it up to 6am, and then if it by some freak accident managed to finish on time and Jonathan ran out of things to say (unlikely! ) they could have just put on a load of Holiday Snaps and stuff.

I didn't even realise we were supposed to hear those announcemts at first - it sounded like they were only meant for the people in the auditorium and the fact I could kinda hear them (but not hear what they were saying) was just a mistake, and the fact there wasn't the usual voiceover when someone like Will Smith took the stage to present an award was because we're supposed to know who he is!

I didn't watch most of the ceremony, just the first hour or so, but as someone mentioned the worst had to have been the red carpet show, especially the first couple of minuites when all you could hear was the 'background' music very loud and nothing anyone was saying.

The BBC bits were quite good though, Jonathan Ross seems to be improving all the time. Pleased with the winners too, well done to Berry, Washington, Connelly and of course our very own Jim Broadbent, they all very much deserved thier awards. except I'd have prefered maybe Lord of the Rings to get best picture, but fair play to Ron Howard for getting best director.

Last year, the same problem of sound mixing happened on Sky's coverage. It was as if the commentary was for ABC's domestic audience, which meant we were all left wondering who was meant to be walking out on stage next.

A shame no UK channel takes E!'s pre-Oscars coverage with Joan and Melissa Rivers squawking at celebrities to come and talk to them. I remember watching it on the German channel Premiere a few years ago - much better than CNN's dire coverage at midnight, and the ABC version wasn't much better.

The E! coverage is quite long, though, isn't it? And of course it's not intended to be shown on the same channel as the ceremony itself. Also, the ABC red carpet show is part of the package international broadcasters buy (not a very important part of it, of course, but it's bundled in!).

E! is a channel I'm surprised hasn't launched in this country yet. Perhaps it's because they want to be able to have original UK programming when they do, instead of fillng the schedules with loads of American stuff some of which is about people we've never heard of here and US entertainment news which would be a day old.

I wonder why they didn't just drop the first part of BBC Learning Zone and show it 'before the first scheduled programme on such and such a day'

Everyone is in an outrage about it, including those Buffy fans who write into Chatterbox