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We need Sky News Radio on DAB
vinnielo
Posts: 8,359 Forum Member
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I think today's been good enough reason. Excellent live news coverage in #Glasgow from the TV station. A direct audio feed on DAB would be sufficient to get an idea on what's going on.. no pictures needed.
Meanwhile.. song after song on Clyde 1 and Heart. Brief mentions on Clyde 1.
Speech programme on BBC Radio Scotland.
BBC 5 live in the middle of a long news bulletin, but returning to coverage by 15:38.
If I'm driving around Glasgow City Centre and it's gridlocked, I want to switch on my radio to know why and I want to be kept up to date with minimal breaks.
During all this time, Sky have had witnesses and other guests on the phone and reporters on location. Bring us SNR, please!
EDIT: BBC Radio Scotland now providing live coverage.
Meanwhile.. song after song on Clyde 1 and Heart. Brief mentions on Clyde 1.
Speech programme on BBC Radio Scotland.
BBC 5 live in the middle of a long news bulletin, but returning to coverage by 15:38.
If I'm driving around Glasgow City Centre and it's gridlocked, I want to switch on my radio to know why and I want to be kept up to date with minimal breaks.
During all this time, Sky have had witnesses and other guests on the phone and reporters on location. Bring us SNR, please!
EDIT: BBC Radio Scotland now providing live coverage.
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I don't accept it's just a local news story, although it seems that the local coverage has been very poor. Clyde seems to have a non-stop music formula that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust will divert them from.
As an aside - you can get Sky News audio via the TuneIn app. Listening via my mobile now.
I have been forced to have Sky News on in the office for years (for work reasons, not voluntarily) and for us it was generally a great source of amusement. They seem to have a quota of at least one ‘Breaking News’ item per hour. Considering there might be one genuine Breaking News item per week most of the items that were !!BREAKING NEWS!! were complete non-events. A bored Skycopter operator saw a police chase because some truant had nicked a neighbour’s Toyota and Sky News can drop everything to give us live coverage of a 30MPh car chase through some Medway town. We were taking bets when they’d have breaking news items about runaway dogs.
The only time I found Sky News to be of use was during the London Riots (in which they played a very dubious role of telling the rioters exactly where they needed to go for a good looting). Because of Sky News’ fascination with anything burning you knew exactly that the riots had already ended days before. If there even had been one burning bin on the Tuesday, Sky News would have had two helicopters zooming in on it. Considering they had to repeat Sunday’s footage two days in a row you knew that the riots had long ended.
The problem is that even the Americans have trouble filling a 24/7 rolling news station due to lack of real news. In Britain that's even worse. That means that 90% of the time is filled with nonsense waiting for that one event they can go all-out. You can see what demographic watches Sky News because of its ads. If they were businessmen and women who need to know what's going on in the world you'd see ads for stuff that matters to them. On the contrary, the ads are all about high-interest loans, debt consolidation, comfy sofas, reclining chairs and poor quality food, clearly targeting the daytime TV audience who like a bit of sensational footage to bring excitement to their day.
The BBC has decided not to have a rolling news station so an alternative, even with many caveats, would be good. It probably wouldn't rate well most of the time, so building on something already existing would seem to be the only commercially viable option.
The ideal would be some sort of automated channel that costs little to run 24/7 that can scale up extremely quickly whenever something major happens. Few people would watch it in between but in case of real Breaking News you'd turn to that channel. Obviously that is easier said then done (you don't want to have presenters on standby for that one event a week) and it may take technological advances for that to become feasible.
Extra news bulletin on Clyde 1 at 1645 after extensive travel news. Now we've got an upbeat song "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger" (erm) with the station joining Clyde 2/Gina McKie shortly.
A simple Sky News audio on DAB would certainly be handy.
EDIT - Gina now doing a simulcast on Clyde 1 and 2 with mellow music. Sounded very close to tears herself.
That's kind of like EuroNews which is manly a loop of reports updated every few hours with no traditional newsreaders. They also have a streaming online 'radio' service, which uses audio from the TV reports and fills any spare time with chill out music..
That sounds rather like it, yes. I have to say, though. My immediate response when I heard of something that had happened in Glasgow was to go to the BBC news website and find detailed coverage there.
You could argue that in this day and age perhaps broadcast (radio or TV) is no longer the solution to this issue, the internet does that very well. Local radio for the initial alert, the internet for the background and depth (and for days on end if you want).
I think for major incidents people turn to TV first - assuming there's live pictures.
Radio is useful if you're on the move or, in my case, at work. The internet is now part of the mix, but I'm not convinced it's to the exclusion of traditional media.
To be fair to Clyde they do seem to have sorted themselves out and are providing a good alternative to a pure news approach to coverage. Bringing Clyde 1 and 2 together makes complete sense and shows at least one benefit of retaining a local identity on both stations.
Also in my opinion a radio version of Al-jazeera would be a good idea.
I didn't listen to the radio today but after the helicopter crash BBC Radio 5 Live switched to rolling news, Radio Scotland reporters were calling in - it was probably decided that better to use their resources to feed BBC radio and TV national news rather than try and put their own service on air overnight.
It seems better to rely on flexibility like that rather than try to run a news station 24/7.
Yes, ITN News Direct was around in the infancy days of DAB (early-to-mid 2000s) and flopped because no one listened to it. But would anyone really listen to it or an alternative today?
Surely that's what BBC 5 Live is for? They are pretty good in major events that affect the nation/larger cities etc. Even TalkSport will break away from sport coverage if a serious breaking story happens.
Some might say that a rolling news radio station could do a better job. I disagree. BBC Local Radio cover the big local stories of interest and are the 'go to' station for most, in the cases of heavy snowfall, school closures etc. Then there's 5 Live for the big breaking national stories.
Let's face it, commercial radio operators will only run a DAB service/station that will make money or companies will advertise on. A rolling news one is probably not that viable.
The only problem is that in case of a major event it indeed makes much more sense to scale up Five Live to 'major event mode' so an automated news service would always just be that, an automated news service.
What did BBC 5 Live and Radio Scotland do this afternoon? As I wrote earlier, they coped quite well after the helicopter crash considering the time of night.
Radio Clyde are doing a 1am bulletin now, fair play to them. Barring a very odd song choice earlier, they seem to have handled the event well taking into account the networking.
Not sure about the other stations, but it's almost a tough one to cover because there isn't a whole lot to report besides the facts. It doesn't really warrant rolling coverage on 5 Live in the way the helicopter crash did.
(I hope it goes without saying, that media coverage is a tiny part of a sad day for the city and those involved, and commenting on that isn't intended to be insensitive in any way. Only mentioning since I saw a thread in Broadcasting be derailed. My thoughts are, of course, with the families affected and the injured).
People of my generation (I'm 51) and older, probably yes, but younger it's t'internet,
particularly daytime, and when many people are at work.
When I spotted this thread yesterday afternoon, I went straight to the BBC website, putting the radio or TV on didn't enter my mind, and in fact neither medium added anything extra or useful to this tragedy. However, if I had been in the city centre itself, I'd have expected local radio stations to have kept me informed of the traffic situation
relating to this, it's about the only USP local radio has left.
Local radio news also coverged it yesterday but maybe not as much as the TV or Sky News radio/BBC radio Scotland.
Darren
It is quite common for there to be few actual facts to report, the helicopter crash was similar but there is still a need for a place to turn to as most will not be watching / listening continuously.
There is now a lot on the Internet but it can be very unreliable though that does not stop some media from perhaps using a little too much.
Interesting to compare with Lockerbie when it was quite some time before it became apparent what had actually happened. Resources were soon pouring into the area from all over the UK, I seem to remember reading that the BBC news and OB units from Glasgow joined on to the back of a police escorted convoy which went down the wrong carriageway of the A74 for some of the time.
A radio station which does not continuously repeat the same topics and one that encourages a good strong debate and a good mixture of presenters from ALL sectors of society.
Like we need a hole in the head.
Radio Scotland had a speech programme on whilst Sky News were already covering it.
It wasn't until about 1540 that they went live to coverage. By then, I've been stuck in traffic for too long and clueless.
BBC 5 live went to about 10 minutes of other news at 1530. Not sure what they were doing before as I wasn't listening, but I'd be surprised if they weren't already covering it.
But during those 10 minutes, I should be able to switch to another channel and get the updates I need.