| Is it just me or have the BBC’s flagship news bulletins all but abandoned their avowed purpose? Maybe Huw Edwards and co simply can’t be bothered working anymore, but they seem increasingly desperate for us to naff off and spend half the broadcast telling us to go elsewhere if we want to hear the news.
“You can find out more about that on News 24”, “check out our website to hear in-depth interviews” or the old favourite “press the red button on your remote for full coverage…” — they’d be as well rebranding it “The Six O Clock News of Places You Can Actually See The News. With George Alagiah and Natasha Kaplinsky”.
And what is this magic red button supposed to do anyway? Furnish one with wisdom? Open a long-forgotten portal to Narnia? I’ve never once seen anyone walk into work in and say, “Hey, did anyone press the red button last night? Totally amazing. Oooooh, you missed it, you really did.”
In this multimedia age scheduled news bulletins may not enjoy the prominence they once did, but if they’re trying to push us towards 24 hour news channels they can think again. Aaaaargh, the cosy-cosy way they tell us the news from comfortable sofas. The endless filler and banal chit-chat. The demands that you send in opinionated text messages and mobile phone footage of major incidents. Citizen journalism, my gluteus maximus — it’s cheaper to get Joe Public to do the work for them and without viewer interactivity the presenters would spend days going, “Uhh. . . err. . . hmm . . . Iraq’s still a bit of a mess isn’t it?” because they’ve already told us the same thing 200 times in the last hour.
24/7 news is an exciting concept, but the reality is that dedicated news channels are only ever absorbing when something really, really, really bad has happened and the entire population tunes in to find out the latest body count. When we’re not satiating the morbid vouyerism we display at such times these channels are as dull as a televised Sudoku challenge between Danielle Lloyd and George W Bush.
Then there’s Sky Sports News and it’s round the clock coverage of breaking stories from every game imaginable, but mainly football. Again, the filler content is high, but if you’re a sports fan its great stuff — for about the first few loops anyway. When you realise you’ve heard about Hull Kingston Rovers’ return to the top flight five times and hate Rugby League it’s time to switch over.
And the finest news programme currently being shown? Channel 4 News of course. More conservative viewers may be put off by its supposed pinko tendencies, but anyone can enjoy Channel 4 News and the scarcely believable amount of mix-ups crammed into each broadcast. Make a drinking game of it: down a shot every time Jon Snow has to apologise for technical problems, another every time the editor switches to the wrong camera and another every time the wrong news reel is shown etc.
Actually don’t — binge drinking is a serious issue and the amount of accidental close-ups of Jon Snow’s tie could prove fatal. |
