Japan: Quake, Tsunami and Nuclear Coverage

This is only the second time I've seen the large breaking news image used on the home page since Friday. The current layout deployed on the website is not exclusive to breaking news; it's used for major events with multiple related stories, and whenever the 'major event' layout is used, it features a large headline, with a collection of smaller related links below it, along with the live text-feed that was first deployed during the Chilean miner rescue I believe, and which links to the auto-updating live page.

Excluding the large breaking news image on the website, which has been used very, very sparingly, neither the text on the site nor the text used on the television graphics is any larger during breaking news situations than it is during coverage of non-breaking stories.

Your point about the excessive use of the red breaking news components is certainly true, although I think it's been made many times already, and it's something that all broadcasters seem to be guilty of sadly.

How odd ! I'd contest that if I were the broadcasters, they don't have to name check BT or Vodafone when it's a phone interview !

The Skype network is free to use for broadcasters though, isn't it?

They're more cash strapped than I thought, if they're trying to save 5 quid a month !

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/prices/

BBC website major event layout back in its box.

I was in the US last week, and gave up trying to follow the story on TV. On Friday, CNN were covering things with an annoying American bias (they gave about as much time to the devastation in Japan as they did to the one man in California who died while taking pictures of the waves), and the PBS Newshour was far too dull and worthy (though did, interestingly, have a report from Libya by Channel 4's Jonathan Rugman). I was rather pleased to be able to get a reasonably good roundup on the plane home in the form of a recorded BBC World bulletin from some hours previously.


I don't know, but there was a story in Ariel the other week about how the kitty was already pretty empty after the Chilean miners story last year; and Egypt and Libya had stretched things further. They'd better hope that nothing major happens next year.


Yesterday, midway through a Skype interview, an incoming call pop-up popped up in front of an interviewee's face. That's not in the terms of use, is it?

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/legal/terms/broadcast/

Thank you, interesting. Perhaps then they should add a disclaimer, such as 'Alternative IP based communication systems are available'. We seem to have (thankfully) moved on from the paranoia of Blue Peter reffering to Selotape as stcky tape, and the BBC changing the title of Top Cat, and swung a bit too far the other way IMHO.

Tim Willcox has now arrived in Japan and broadcasting.

Do we know if Alagiah has left, not seen him since Monday.

I was wondering that too. Did he present on World at all yesterday? Matt Frei and Clive Myrie covered the nationals yesterday and Matt is doing the one again today.

EDIT - Tim doing the one instead.

Presumably BBC News run April->March in finance terms, so unless they are carrying over overspends from this year to next, next year might not be as relevant to this year? (I suspect they will be making bids for some extra cash to cover exceptional circumstances?)

Tim Willcox has been presenting features and updates from Tokyo this afternoon for BBC News, and at around 1708 on the News Channel, there was a DTL discussion between him and Clive Myrie, in which each of their live video windows were overlaid onto a map of Japan. Unfortunately, the lower-third supers almost completely obscured Tim's window while he was speaking, before he handed over to Clive for an extended live update from northwest Japan.

Less than two minutes later, we returned to the map two-way discussion for Clive's hand-off back to Tim in Tokyo, and the graphic had been updated to reposition Tim's window above the lower-third zone. Surprised that they made this change so quickly, but lots of gold stars to them for doing so... although I'll have to deduct points for not getting the graphic right the first time.