So, those of you follow metropol, as you should, will know I went on holiday lately. Sadly however only the last hotel was, shall we say, truly receptive of my needs...
http://www.hymagumba.com/uploads/bbc-world-448.jpg
anyhow, before that I ended up watching an awful lot of CNN and therefore intend now to go on about it without having read much of this thread, so apologies for likely repeating everything.
First of all, graphics. I love them. I think they're so neat, snazzy, modern and fresh. They're useful whilst being non distracting and don't waste space and look as daft as the BBC's large chunky blocks of white. I love how the other shows like the sports roundup use slighty different ways of animating them on too, I really think it brings the brand together.
However, what exactly is the point of them going round the world to their other newsrooms (eg london / hong kong) if every set is identical? I could understand if they were in some way different but I really couldn't tell the were in asia apart from the fact it had changed from Fenula to that lady with the sock in her mouth as she speaks.
Secondly, why do they have so many ad breaks when they only seem to have about 6 adverts on rotation. By the end of my holiday I was very aware that they at exxon mobile have found ways of transporting 70% more liquid gas, and thats like reducing the eifel tower down to a metre. Why don't they have one break at :15 and charge a bit more? Plus I don't like the way they crash back into the news.
Next, why are shows sponsored by dodgy banks from Nigeria? I visited Intercontinental Bank's website and found most of the pages on it to be broken. I certainly won't be transfering my account there any time soon.
What are the point of these annoying "CNN Spotlight" things too? They seem to slice a random bit of footage and then clag a sponsor bumper on each end. All they do is get very tiring. "What is shark fin soup" indeed.
Also in addition to their endless ad breaks and endless spotlights they have a total of three trailers for themselves and their dodgy shows. I was sick of seeing Christiane Amanpour bellow
you have SEEEN the devestation
at me then seeing that dodgy australian inbred woman going "they've got terrorists amoungst them. THEY HAVE. Course after the first week I then got to suffer *this could herald the end of europe* man. Well scaremonger as you wll, I watched that show (I was rather interested) and there was sod all that could herald the end of europe. Utter tripe.
However I suspect the reason for the above is very clear. They have very little news. They only seem to have a dozen reports, and these seem to be played for 36 hours non stop without any change to the running order.
Now BBC World might have a dreadful breakfiller, and their presenters may seem bored stiff and could do with some of the enthusiasm that the CNN London ones have (although not to the extremes of the atlanta crew obv) but my god they have so much more news. I only had World for three days and there seemed to be more reports during that time than there had been on CNN for the previous two weeks.
So my opinion of CNN is basically, no content, but fab graphics. And if I ever hear that woman asking randoms how their life has been defined by nelson mandela again I think my hair will end up on the floor.