Northern Ireland news thread

Last night UTV Live had one of their new pointless maps on air with regard to a drugs seizure in Newtownards. It was used as an OOV for a good 20 seconds. Now Newtownards is a large town just 11 miles from Belfast. There was no one watching the programme who did not know where it is.

I'm waiting for them to use one telling us where Belfast is.

Meanwhile, over on u.tv...

Now that they're splitting up the body of a news story with an advert we end up with a situation on THIS page where news of a road traffic accident has an advert for Direct Line Car Insurance in the middle of it.

Yeah they only introduced the weather maps quite recently. Before it used to be just Paul reading out a short summary if there was time to fill at the end but it always sounded ridiculous and very unprofessional with a lot of um's and aah's! Seems it's become something of a regular piece now though! Either that or UTV Live are very bad with their timing!

Probably because Paul and Kate can't do convincing banter like Mike and Lynda.

One of the new style UTV Live maps used the other day tried to point out where Strabane was - but when you have white text indicating a town at least 13 miles from the nearest coastline on a yellow map... you can't see where the place is.

Thats bad if you cant see where it is.They need more accuracy in my view

They're all huddled under one big marquee, well it's not that big, family sized Still UTV managed to send someone over and get their UTV microphone in shot.


Ahh but it's the dedication. With the graphic titled DEAL OR NO DEAL did you spot the information boxes that spun in were designed like C4's Deal or No Deal red and blue stickers that are placed in the box?


Prob just a filler, they've often used a brief weather summary to lead into the ITN news when they finish early. Sometimes its quite long, sometimes it's just 2 seconds.

The entire UTV 1110 bulletin has just gone out in the wrong aspect ratio on satellite and analogue. 16F16 presented in a 4:3 frame. Good job, guys.

Just to even things out a little...

An entire 6.30pm edition of BBC Newsline went out in the wrong aspect ratio on 26 September on BBC One NI analogue.

What aspect ratio did it go out in?

The black bars at the top and bottom were noticeably larger than usual. At a guess, I'd say it was 16:9 rather than the usual 14:9.

The problem was apparent on all BBC NI junctions on analogue until 9pm that evening.

Ah, well that's clearly not quite right but at least no one was tall and thin or short and fat.

We were just treating analogue viewers to extra material...

Have Newsline really sent Mark Davenport, Gareth Gordon and, from the sounds of it, Mar-TEEN-a Pur-DEE to St. Andrews?

EDIT: When did Yvette Shapiro replace James Kerr as Newsline's Business Correspondent?

Speaking of business correspondents, Jamie Delargy is still at UTV Live - did you get him confused by Darwin Templeton, Peter? I read somewhere he got the editor's job at the NewsLetter, hence he will no longer be involved with Insight

Sorry - have to laugh at BBC Newsline's exchange between Donna and Julian O'Neill on the "Cappucino Confrontation" - today's The Day Today moment.

I am half expecting either side to do a dramatic reconstruction of the event tomorrow...