London Live

Considering the presentation in terms of the graphics is generally really good, I'm surprised those Final Cut Pro X templates made it into the report.

1 and 1/2 week since the launch....

The Weather and Traffic is a serious weak link in Wake Up London, Vanessa maybe nice, but she's can't present for toffee. There's too much 'errms' 'ahhh' and really bad ad-libbing. It should be clear and to the point. The 'Weather Window' is also annoying, as its mostly the same old Tower Bridge camera shot. It would be nice if they had some full screen weather graphics. I agree with someone earlier in the thread about London Go, one of the better programmes of London Live.

Also the London Live Updates needs a bit of boosting, its seriously lacking in comparison to BBC3's 60 Second News, graphics wise and content. The plus side is their acquisition programming, some of the web series shows that have been made for TV is actually quite entertaining, however the studio based shows has a way to go.

BTW, why is London Live in such poor quality on Freeview and DSat?

I have some ideas on how they can turn it around a little bit with regards to the live shows.

Wake Up London - Promote Alex Beard as the main anchor five days a week,, bring in another presenter to do weather and travel, have Gavin and Marc alternating presenting sports bulletins. OB's should contain one serious and one light per edition, introduce a ticker with news, weather and travel info, beef up the City report with a reporter in the studio, axe the fashion report and slightly alter the focus to a general audience instead of 15-34s.

Headline London - Reduce to 30 minutes per edition, 15 mins of news/features and one debate. Also air on Thursday's replacing Power Lunch.

Power Lunch - Move to Sunday afternoons, preferably after the political shows on BBC One. This show could be pre-recorded.

London Go - No change, they appear to have mastered the format right. Simon Thompson has done a great job producing this show and getting the balance right. Maleena Pone is one to watch for a mainstream channel in the future.

Not the One Show - Reduce to 30 mins from 7.30-8pm with all the fluffy elements, also change the title of the programme, something along the lines of 'London Lite'

I'd introduce a mainstream news bulletin at 1900, 15 mins of news, then The Big Question segment of Not the One Show, presented all by Anthony Baxter, another star of this sinking ship.

Hourly updates axed except for 12, 3, 6 and 10pm.

Overall, the interesting thing out of all of this is the real talent on London Live have been those hired as journalists, Alex, Anthony and Maleena, rather than those they hired to present the main shows who come from BBC/ITV backgrounds.

I'd agree with most of that. I'm not holding my breath though.

Nice summation of the news component of LL. These would be great changes. I really think they need to beef up their Morning show in a major way. I think an "enriched" screen format is the way to go in the morning. They should work on multiple simultaneous information streams. This is something that will make them completely different from their competition. I still think they should start earlier.
LL could surely adapt this to their graphic style only for the morning broadcast
http://www.listentolena.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_1115.jpg

Not exactly the stereotypical London cab driver the person who suggested it was thinking of I expect.

The travel women reads the travel like she's never been on the tube in her life, I think I'd do a better job and I live about 200 miles away. I suppose getting from your trendy apartment to the trendy bars of Camden doesn't involve the North Circular 'Way' or the Central Line. (Or any roads where there has been a collision, sorry I mean a breakdown)

If they did do a split screen format they'd probably fill it with the same road news for a single road all morning and a section dedicated to a twitter feed where hipster types who just happen to work on the channel, talk about how they hate Monday mornings but prefer cats over dogs.

The targeting of hipsters alienates 99% of the audience who don't live in Hoxton, Dalston, Shoreditch or Camden and go to work in Soho or at Silicon Roundabout by Old Street tube.

On Not the One Show, the panel were debating the London Living Wage (tick box quota of 'news') and Louise Scodie asked the question in such a sarcastic manner as if to say that they were not interested.

They only really became animated about any form of 'news' when a viral about a woman walking a man as a dog in Farringdon. This is the kind of fluff that should be relegated to a separate show. Not as in today's show had a discussion on the London Living Wage and a discussion about the Olympic legacy on The Big Question.

On Freeview they are sharing a very low bitrate multiplex (approx 8Mbs compared to 24Mbs for a standard DVB-T mux) with two other channels. I suspect the DSat bitrate has been set to match. The Freeview mux is low bitrate because it is incredibly low power, and so using a much more robust modulation scheme (QPSK rather than 64-QAM), which massively reduces capacity to increase reception range. (It encodes 2 bits per symbol instead of 6 - so carries 1/3rd the bitrate)

Their studio and most location reports are also being shot on DSLRs. These are infamous for introducing nasty artefacts that hammer MPEG2 and H264 encoders, with their aliasing artefacts stealing bitrate from real picture content.

And who are all at work when the original content airs anyway?


Beware hiring a standup as a presenter for this kind of show. Their first instinct, in many cases, is to be sarcastic to get a quick laugh, and to distance themselves from the actual content. Distance is the last thing you need. You need people who commit and are engaged, and engaging.


Interestingly - London Live seem to have hired some real talent in the second tier, whilst their main flagship presenters are under performing big time. Could be that the second tier are actually real finds. Hope the discover some stars - they need something to shine.

And they REALLY need to sort out breakfast. Travel and Weather is a key local selling point. It's something I'd actually watch and find useful.

You need someone who "gets" it, and can talk conversationally, fluently and confidently about it without resorting to cliches. You need people who sound like they know the area they are talking about. And they REALLY need the travel camera feeds.

Agreed, Claudia-Liza is ex BBC, yet has struggled with 60 minutes rather than 60 seconds. She's been stronger on the news updates, yet because of the lack of news and even graphics hasn't been used to her best potential.

I think the likes of Gavin and Marc need set editorial values which this channel doesn't provide to work to their best potential, the two male leads have been disappointing, which has probably led to Marc's demotion on Wake Up London to two shows per week.

If Maleena, Alex and Anthony are the star second tier, this leaves a third tier exclusively with Vanessa. Compare her with Sian Welby, who previous to her weather presenting job on Channel 5 had no previous experience presenting bulletins working on student or online programmes inbetween working in a clothes store and yet her delivery was miles ahead in comparison to Vanessa's constant car crash bulletins. LL appear to be padding around Vanessa's links with more on-screen information, yet the presenter is an important part of that service. If she can't do it, they might as well get the main presenter to do it with static captions.

I'd agree with all this - and I'd also suggest moving the weather and travel into the main studio and doing it from the same position they use for the Big Question. The touchscreen just isn't working - operating it is a distraction for the presenter, and it's so big that it makes the framing of the shot look terrible. It would look much better just having the presenter sitting in front of the Big Question screen and running a sequence of graphics behind them and full-screen.

Even the biggest US local stations don't do anything much fancier than that in terms of how these bulletins are presented.