BBC North West Today Breakfast Bulletins Amateurish
Glomper
Posts: 3,250 Forum Member
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Recent weeks, especially since move from Oxford Road to Salford, the BBC Breakfast North West Today early bulletins ( six a day) have been an illustration of how NOT to do it.
Most days.....
Cut to local opt-out late, getting a part of London Bulletins.
Late fading up of local presenter sound.
People apparently chatting loudly in the background whilst presenter in vision, throughout the bulletins, could be a loudspeaker.
Leaving presenter mic open whilst on VT inserts, making VT sound low, and open, and hearing presenter sometimes.
Late fade outs of presenter mic when going to VT clip.
Early fade ins of presenter mic coming to end of clips, clip becoming very open sound.
Late fades of presenter sound when in vision back from clip.
Forgetting to opt back in to BBC Breakfast, local presenter talking about problems locally.
Wrong captions, including showing young children as recovering alcoholics.
Flash frames a plenty, denied despite video evidence.
"I couldn't see any"
Phone ringing loudly in background whilst live.
And so it goes on, nearly every bulletin, nearly every day.
Nothing appears to be acted on, and emails are ignored.
These are not Technical Faults, but operator error, a change of staff after move to Salford ?
Lunch-time and Evening bulletins mercifully free of the "finger troubles".
Journalistically, content is fine, but WTF is going on with the Technical Staff and Operational abilities.
It wasn't like this in my day, using trained, experienced, quality staff, and freelances.
In many years I never saw such amateurish transmissions.
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Are your local opt-out breakfast bulletins as bad, every day ?
Most days.....
Cut to local opt-out late, getting a part of London Bulletins.
Late fading up of local presenter sound.
People apparently chatting loudly in the background whilst presenter in vision, throughout the bulletins, could be a loudspeaker.
Leaving presenter mic open whilst on VT inserts, making VT sound low, and open, and hearing presenter sometimes.
Late fade outs of presenter mic when going to VT clip.
Early fade ins of presenter mic coming to end of clips, clip becoming very open sound.
Late fades of presenter sound when in vision back from clip.
Forgetting to opt back in to BBC Breakfast, local presenter talking about problems locally.
Wrong captions, including showing young children as recovering alcoholics.
Flash frames a plenty, denied despite video evidence.
"I couldn't see any"
Phone ringing loudly in background whilst live.
And so it goes on, nearly every bulletin, nearly every day.
Nothing appears to be acted on, and emails are ignored.
These are not Technical Faults, but operator error, a change of staff after move to Salford ?
Lunch-time and Evening bulletins mercifully free of the "finger troubles".
Journalistically, content is fine, but WTF is going on with the Technical Staff and Operational abilities.
It wasn't like this in my day, using trained, experienced, quality staff, and freelances.
In many years I never saw such amateurish transmissions.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Are your local opt-out breakfast bulletins as bad, every day ?
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Comments
Where are experienced quality people supposed to get that expeience? In my experience stations go through phases like this every now and then when they have new crew, but it improves.
It isn't often I would say it but Granada Reports/News is light years ahead of the Beeb, in my opinion.
Although I must say Granada's Party People is pretty rubbish, very amateurish.
I accept your points but with respect, and as a North West viewer I can confirm (for whatever reason) it is consistently naff.
Onwards and upwards though. There really seems no balance to the programmes, the new male anchor hasn't helped. I understand he is an experienced presenter but he seems awkward.
But in fairness to him it's always difficult to follow someone as familiar to us here as Gordon Burns.
Let's give it a chance as I suspect it may well be the only regional TV news service here in time to come.
Nothing to do with moving, or content.
It's incompetent, poorly trained, newer ( cheaper ? ) staff doing the most basic of errors, lazy operation, lack of technique.
And ..... I, and many others previously, did do better, much better !
And, yesterday, after more emails, the later bulletin was so much better... no late fades, no lazy open mics, and apart from a badly spelt graphic corrected on air, was near perfect, operationally.
They can be forgiven because they use the lovely Carol Lowe though, quite a dish to men of a certain age. Also one for certain fellas of 37 too!
Second that ....
It was unfortunately Carol who recently was left on air for around 30 seconds after the switch back to Network should have happened, and was talking to gallery staff about problems in the bulletin, thankfully nothing embarrassing.
The look on her face when she realised she was still live was a picture, after being told by the gallery.
She is by far my favourite early bulletins presenter, and she is a really nice person too.
The BBC has conceded there have been IT problems with the move to Media City. there were even rumours the move north of Breakfast would be delayed. But it is maintained they are relatively minor problems:eek:associated with the move to any new building and Breakfast will not be delayed.
Been more logical to have moved the news room to the chief constables office at GMP or Merseyside, or merged the entire operation with Crimewatch , with the overly biased sports round up broadcast from say Old Trafford or Anfield, with the clothes horses that do the rain & wind round up ( tell us what its already been doing for 3/4 of the segement) stuck on top of winter hill with a brolly & a stick. It would appear that reading the autocue as though they are reading the opticians chart has survived the move from Oxford Rd.
Here's what happens, a journo builds up a list of events, tapes, graphics, sound etc. then a tech in the gallery sits there and presses F12 on cue and the events are triggered. It's a bit flakey and when it goes wrong you've got one tech doing it by hand.
Saves on staff but obviously broadcast quality is reduced.
Appreciate that but.......
Doesn't explain ...
Air Con Noise
People chatting
Bad fades, mics open over VT clips
Mics up and down over Weather
Wrong captions (op error admitted)
Flash frames in edited packages
Phone ringing in background whilst live
As per my original post !
That is all down to bad practise.
And of course "finger trouble"
Quite probably journo's trying to do the jobs of trained tech ops.
The message may be getting through, today, Wednesday, bulletins were good.
Close mic sound, no Air Con, mics in & out where supposed to be, no-one chatting and laughing in background.
Out & In of Network as correct junctions.
(Apart from 6:28 today, where the presenter mic was open when the pre-opt switch was thrown, a good minute before the opt, then realised and faded out)
Still no excuse for finger trouble and bad practises.
However, not the first report on this...
Broken Broadcasting Corporation: Beeb's flagship HQ hit by 500 faults since opening
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bbcs-flagship-new-headquarters-in-salford-768462
And, having been involved with fitting IT into new or refurbished retail stores, such building or refurb faults are not uncommon, especially where external contractors are involved. Snagging lists totalling a number of pages are not uncommon either (things to be completed, repaired or replaced).
BTW, Salford is not owned by the BBC, so the responsibility for fixing things in a timely manner should lie with the owners, The Peel Group.
Or in IT - Leading edge, not bleeding edge.
Quite, not that uncommon really and is not the BBC's fault as it's NOT their building.
Heather the Weather didn't have her mic on, told them, no response !
Maybe they've set up a rule on their inbox to automatically delete your e mails
Nope they do respond often, and reply too sometimes.
Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1489393_bbc-breakfast-to-broadcast-first-edition-from-salford-on-monday-10-april?rss=yes