Bloomberg TV

Now, I know it's not the most exciting of channels, but I thought it might be worth noting that financial news channel Bloomberg has had a relaunch. New consistent graphics and studios have been unveiled in Europe and the US (although I haven't seen any changes in Asia yet). The US studio features 'smart' glass, similar to the old Five News studio, allowing full screen projections behind the presenter or a clear view of the newsroom. The glass also slides across to allow the presenter to walk into the newsroom behind them to speak with correspondents.

You can see a clip of some Bloomberg US coverage here (sadly, it doesn't show off the new studio).

The London studio looks broadly similar to the US one, although I haven't seen all the same features in use. One difference I have spotted is that a large screen is built into the floor, and is used - among other things - to display market numbers.

Here's a bit more from the US studio - notice as the presenter, Margaret Brennan, walks into the newsroom, the glass behind her slides back into place.

I like the new graphics, simple and not very cluttered. Much better than CNBC or FOX Business.

Andrea Catherwood has joined the channel too, the Media Guardian says.

Looks like there is still a bit of change-over period.

I.e. the Asian coverage last night still had the following design:

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6796/38763845.jpg

I'm not quite sure when she started with Bloomberg, but I've seen her for the first time on the channel today, hosting the "Briefing" programme (which is on as I type this).

Andrea's move to Bloomberg was reported a few weeks ago - and was timed to co-incide with the relaunch I think.

(Not sure what Andrea had been doing since her political show on ITV with Andrew Rawnsley was axed)

At the risk of sounding obsessive, I really, really like the titles for Bloomberg's European trading day programming. Here's the generic "Bloomberg News" titles, although variations on this for individual programmes have appeared in the past couple of weeks.

since last week, Asia has now changed it's graphics package after Europe...
but still they don't do the "standing up", which is being done by US and Europe...

That's interesting. I saw Asia Business Tonight yesterday, and that was still using the old graphics. But they showed a clip from Asia Confidential earlier in the day, and that did have the new graphics.

I noticed this with the US programming incidentally - the morning programming had the new graphics and set, the late afternoon/evening programming still had the old graphics and set. Then they progressively adopted the new graphics (first, the supers; later, the full screens), and now I'm noticing they're using the new set. Very odd.

I REALLY wish that Bloomberg would improve the quality of their online stream, a .asx at <200k (and that's the US stream) is poor, it's not been improved for years.

I also think that they should stream the broadcast version, with the lower-thirds, and not the raw.

This one is 600k

http://www.coolstreaming.us/channel/49069/Bloomberg__.html