bbc news - 24 by nature, no longer by name
21 Apr '08, 22:02
The revamp of the BBC's news channel formerly known as BBC News 24, but now simply as BBC News (or the BBC News Channel) took place today with the change of name being quite a small, but quite controversial alteration.
Posted on various message boards, including responses to a BBC Blog, are comments slating the decision to drop the '24' from the 10 year old channel. Apparently, it's destroying a brand that has been built up over the channels life. Some people like to draw parallels with the ITV News Channel which folded in 2005. Of course, these people fail to realise that the brand, of course, is BBC News - a brand that the BBC are keen to enforce throughout their news outlets.
For this reason, the main bulletins on BBC One are also being renamed to BBC News at One, BBC News at Six and BBC News at Ten. But wait - ITV are using the name News at Ten! How on Earth will people differentiate between the two? Of course, the idea that someone could say to a friend 'did you see that story on BBC News last night?' doesn't enter the minds of the people who make these comments. Honestly, the way some people think, you'd believe the world would come to an end if a full stop was missing from the scrolling ticker!
The new studios look nice though. They have a very modern look, and without trying to think like a magpie - it does look shiny! There is a fault with the screen behind the presenters that make it obvious that the studio doesn't actually have a glass back onto the newsroom - a small crack to the viewers left of one of the presenters spoilt the illusion. Hopefully this will be rectified quickly.
As for the graphics, well the heavy red/black globe graphics for Top of Hour have been redone. They are a lot lighter now, with a white background with reds and oranges in the globe. I like the grey ticker, although that's something else which seems to have caused some complaints. The headline text is nice and clear, being red on white during the summary and black on white at other times.
Even the music has had a slight makeover which is nice, although I have to admit I'm not a fan of 'swooshing' sounds when the red transmission line races across the screen in the Top of Hour graphics.
My final verdict though, I like it very much and greatly prefer it to the older graphics which were getting quite tired.
My verdict on people though? Well after reading all those comments slating the national broadcaster for spending license payers money on a revamp (it was only ã550,000 for goodness sake), I've decided that the vocal majority just love to moan about anything. If they had their way, news would still be one person sitting in a newsroom speaking the Queen's English to a nation watching a black and white broadcast.
I wonder if these people ever have anything good to say about anything?
times new roman is very 1990's
31 Mar '08, 21:48
The BBC are undergoing a significant update of their news pages, probably for the first time since 2003, introducing new features to bring it more up-to-date with the internet of today.
The overall layout of the style appears to be remaining the same, with a BBC banner at the top, navigation menu down the left, the main article in the centre and related links on the right. There's no arguement from me here. This is a tested format that appears to work well.
However, the changes are quite obvious. The BBC are moving away from the archaic 800 pixel wide pages and increasing their width to accomodate screens at a resolution of 1024 pixels wide and above. Pictures are supossedly going to bigger although unless it's just me, I'm yet to notice this increase (I assume old pictures for old stories will remain the same). The site is more spaced out, which I think looks quite odd in the "Around the world now" section on the main page of news.bbc.co.uk but may look okay given time to adjust and video should be embedded into news pages which has been creeping in but as of today, I still experienced pop-up boxes with every video I tried to watch (maybe it's not for video only stories, but for those with an accompanying article?).
One thing I don't like though (there had to be one eh?). I do wonder what it is that attracted the designers to the Times New Roman font. I'm sure it's not just me that thinks this looks terrible untidy and frankly out-of-date. I suppose it doesn't look so bad on the main article text on the front page, but the smaller the font gets, the worse it looks so the menus look untidy, and almost unfinished.
I'm hopeing that's one thing that's still due to be corrected. I've just looked back at the site and noticed that there is now two different fonts in operation. What looks like Arial is used in the ticker at the top of the news page, just below the BBC banner. Ariel is also used at the very top of the page for the "Low Graphics" and "Accessibility" links which fits in nicely with the BBC's logo. Ariel is also used in the footer for the copyright date, disclaimer and links such as "About Us". It looks odd having the content of the page use this old fashioned font.
I'll be interested to see how this pans out as they finish making changes. I'm hopeful for a very nice site fit for an internet that is many times faster than it was 5 years ago. I hear that BBC News 24 will be getting a new set on 21 April this year as well.
P.S. This entry is dedicated to Charlie, who couldn't wait to find out what I thought of the site!
visit to the bbc
05 Sep '04, 00:00
Had an exciting day today - I went to the BBC!
Someone I know from Hospital Radio works for the World Service, and so Charlie and myself managed to get a little tour of Bush House (the home of the World Service) - well I say little, we got there at about 10am and stayed until 3pm :-)
So it was of course an early start with the alarm set for 7am, and arriving at Chelmsford train station at 8:30am. The 8:42 train arrived pretty much on time and 45 minutes later we were in London Liverpool Street (we were lucky enough to get one of the flash new trains on the way).
By the way, I think the approach into London is the most miserable depressing sight ever. Graffiti everywhere, charred black bricks, little sunlight - sometimes I'm glad I don't live in the city.
Anyway, once we had arrived, it was time to travel like sardines, on the Tube for the 3 stops to Holborn and then a five minute walk down the road into Bush House.
It's quite a big building and definitely has a museum feel about it. As you walk in, a plasma screen on the right screens 'BBC World' which I think is a bit of a cheek since us Brits aren't supposed to watch it!
So once we were in we had a look around various studios used by the World Service. They all appeared to be quite old with a lot of use, but the phrase 'built like a tank' came up once or twice.
One thing that is odd about their studios (and I understand it to be a BBC thing) is that the faders are in reverse - i.e. closed when up, and open when down. That would take some getting used too.
We also saw one of the drama studios - a large room that when the door shuts behind you becomes eerily quiet considering the size of it. There was barely the whisper of any air (even the air conditioning was barely audible).
So after the tour of the studios, we took a walk across what is 2/3 stops on the Underground but a good 20min walk by foot to Great Portland Street (nr Oxford Circus) and paid a visit to Broadcasting House (the home of stations such as Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio 4). Broadcasting House is currently surrounded by a building site as work is being done to extend BH to bring more of the BBC there including TV News.
After our long, hot walk we paid a visit to the BBC Canteen where they only serve hot food on a weekend - no sandwiches (shouldn't that be the other way around). I bought a Sprite and a packet of Fruit Pastels and we all headed up to the roof (not the very top of the building, but not far off on the 7th floor). There is some nice views up there (although the building site does spoil some of them). You can see for miles!
Once we had eaten what would have been our lunch - if we had sandwiches, we were briefly shown around the building. Unfortunately we couldn't go into any of the studios so we just peered through the windows.
We then headed back to Bush House (using the Underground this time from Oxford Circus) and were allowed to stand in a small studio and watch an Albanian news programme being broadcast (yes it was IN Albanian too - couldn't understand a word). All good fun.
At 3pm, we all headed back home (on an old train without air conditioning mind you), arriving in Chelmsford at about 4:10pm
Charlie popped over on the way back to pick up some Cat-5 cable I'm not using so I said he could have it, and then I popped over to his when taking him back home to pick up one of my CDs (The Zutons) and to collect a CD of up to date Magic adverts that Charlie kindly burnt for me.
Overall I think it's been a very productive day (and hot and tiring).
(photo's available in photo album section)
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