BBC News 24

In December 2002, Richard Lambert published a report through the Department of Culture Media and Sport reviewing the BBC’s 24 hour television news channel. The Independent Review of BBC News 24 (PDF) was published at a time when the channel was underperforming in comparison to Sky News, and questions were being asked about what it should be doing.
As well as audiences, it examined the station’s costs, and whether it was delivering on its promises.
Overall, the report was pretty positive. There was areas were improvements could be found, for instance in regional news from around the UK. And it was noted that in newspaper offices where televisions were on, it was likely to be Sky News rather than News 24 that was the channel of choice – possibly down to the time it’s been around (it was launched in 1989), the speed with which it breaks news, and the snappier style that it employs.
This report came and went, and in February 2003, after a reasonable pause for thought, the BBC published its response (PDF) to the Lambert Review. The response included an acknowledgement of Lambert’s motif of News 24 being a broadsheet to Sky News’ Daily Mail in terms of market positioning. But the report also spoke about the new graphics that had been put in place, and various other improvements and changes that were forthcoming.
Looking at this response 18 months later, it’s interesting to note what has and hasn’t happened. The talk of programmes such as Head 2 Head, which does exist, but, like much of the “specialist” programming, only runs at weekends. Sports and party conference reviews aside, the only non-news regularly running during weekday peaktimes are Business Today, which has shifted to 10.30pm as predicted in the report and Hardtalk, which has shifted to the considerably off-peak 11.30pm slot. And has regional coverage really improved? Examples for stories do take place outside the southeast, but I’d hope for maybe more stories from around the regions, possibly supplied by the BBC’s local news teams.
I think the most interesting part is the “Breaking News” section of the response, which now seems more important than just about anything else on a 24 hour news channel. The BBC’s response notes that it’s “essential to be accurate as well as fast”, before going on to note that most major stories break at the same time on News 24 and Sky News (possibly because both channels have the other on in their newsroom, and share the same agency wire feeds).
It’s the “Breaking News” syndrome that has really detracted from both BBC News 24 and Sky News to my mind. At work, we have a TV that sometimes shows a muted Sky News (no access to News 24 there), and someone who doesn’t normally see it wandered by the other day and saw Sky’s large “Breaking News” caption and stopped agog. What incredible thing was happening? Nothing especially big actually. News “breaks” all the time, as new stories come in from correspondents and wire services. Once a story starts to “break” it can go on for some time. Sadly the term is now so over used that it has the same caché as “Exclusive” does in a tabloid newspaper. Everything’s “breaking” all the time. When something really important is happening, it’s hard to tell apart from the something pretty unimportant on a slow news day.
An interesting media studies course experiment would be to monitor the number of times BBC News 24 (for they are now equally as guilty) and Sky News use this expression in the course of a week.
And getting back to News 24, it’s worth noting that when they re-designed their graphics, they decided to go for something bigger, bolder and more striking than Sky’s already big, bold and striking graphics. The main caption takes up just about the bottom 25% of the screen’s height (there is a small gap at the bottom, but we’re out of the “safe” area here). Abd this caption runs just about permamently, meaning that as often as not , something relevant is being obscured. I think that this particularly struck a chord with me when I was trying to watch the presidential debate last night in Idaho. Naturally, BBC News 24 were screening it live, but with an enormous “US Election” graphic in case we didn’t know what we were seeing, along with a sub heading that changed and informed us repeatedly of things like the fact that this is the “second of three” debates and so on. Could they have just removed the graphic? Seemingly not. Added to that was the top-left “live” logo which at times obliterated George Bush’s face in wider shots. Seeing the reactions of people not speaking is an important part of these debates. The “live” logo did get moved after a while, but you got the feeling that there was too much screen litter serving little purpose. Compare and contrast with the CNN coverage, which simply put logos in the corner of the screen and ran their regular ticker right along the bottom. More screen space.
That’s just a single example, but until we get out of this ridiculous cycle of permamently “breaking news”.
There are many good things about 24 hour news channels, and bad things. A well edited “package” is still preferable to the sometimes undoubted watchability of non-stop live feeds of events, at least if you want to understand the broader picture of what you’re seeing. And then there’s the feeling sometimes that reporters at a big event get no time to actually get out there and see what’s going on. Instead, they just stand in front of their camera crew and talk non-stop. But that’s another story.
Returning to News 24, what would I like to see? What would I do to improve things? Well, I’ve often said that repeats of Panorama in peaktime would be simple to do. Run an 8.00pm bulletin for twenty minutes on Monday evening, and then show the previous evening’s Panorama unless events had severly impaired its topicality. Regularly show more news from around the country. Use a slot like the 8.30pm one on weekdays to schedule reporting that specialises either in specific areas like science, education or even entertainment, and expand “Reporters” since this is the kind of programme that only the BBC can do – basically a TV version of From Our Own Correspondent.
It’s just a shame that the channel sometimes feels like it has to be live all the time. It really doesn’t.