Northern Ireland news thread

I doubt it. The Five Thirty Show only started last year, when STV had even less money than it does now. I think it has surprised a lot of people in terms of its ratings. STV I think are more likely to stick with it, they seem to be trying to increase Scottish output, rather than restrict it as UTV are doing in NI.

Thats the old version of the theme music!

Seems "Late and Live" is coming back for what's probably its final series next Monday night.

EDIT: Link expired

One week of "UTV Live" on its own - and I have to say, UTV have made a mistake in giving "UTV Life" the axe and pushing their long-serving, senior reporters into taking voluntary redundancy.

Take tonight's programme - only around nine minutes of news with the three VT packages recorded in Belfast apart from a brief shot of a Derry call centre which for all I known could have been library footage and the amount of time spent on trailing coming reports could be better used to include more stories or even fit in an extra VT.

Sport is still covered well with seven minutes - even if it seems it's now a two-man ship with Logie and Neil and the odd freelance stint from the mysterious John Flack or Graham Little's video kiosk.

Then ten minutes of "UTV Life" gubbins with the reports by RoboFadden (had to laugh at Gregory getting excited at calling "his" side of the city modern!), Pamela (Paul's "kicked the bucket" line out of that report was cringeworthy) and Alison (ditto Paul's "feel the lurve" link into that) - the latter two reports filmed in - you guessed it - Belfast. So much for the new video-journalists.

"Ooh come on Tina, say it with feeling". Pass me those razor blades.

It seems many of the big stories that have happened this week (the murder in Prehen, the Omagh trial developments, the death of the toddler in Ballymena) are not being followed up following the first day of coverage. Then again, I missed Thursday's edition when these stories may have been featured. I have to point out, I have problems watching Newsline online, so I can't compare the two programmes like-for-like.

And I noticed sounds skipping and VT freezing throughout the online stream - and can UTV ever get the editing of the online stream of UTV Live right so no part of the programme is cut out?

And what was the deal with tonight's UTV Live/ITV Evening News junctions - the first had Sarah Dobson, the second had Gillian Porter - was one, or were either live?

Nice to see that UTV Live, post-job cuts, isn't allowing reduced resources to affect its bias towards Norn Iron's capital city...

Outside of sport, only two news stories were not focused on the Greater Belfast area. I was disappointed the lead story dealt with how the rates increases will affect the three Greater Belfast councils, but nothing about elsewhere. It would have been nice to get views from the council and taxpayers in Fermanagh, where the rate increases were higher than any other council area, and the other areas of Northern Ireland. HA HA HA! They showed Jamie Delargy cocking up his piece to camera before getting it right on the second take - Lynda apologised for the "glitch" after the report. Surely this should have been checked before the VT was loaded onto the system?

I also really dislike the tabloid-esque reports the likes of Sharon O'Neill and Sarah Dobson have been submitting recently on UTV Live. While they'd go down well on other regional news programmes, they just don't fit the feel of a Northern Irish news programme as I know it. The O'Neill report tonight appeared to feature a few cut-through-blacks which were too distracting.

Also, there were only six reports and two news stories covered in brief, as well as four sports stories, covered in the programme. I'm sure UTV used to cover more stories in the 6.00-6.30pm slot before now. At least the programme now feels as cheap as its opening titles.

Other thoughts on tonight's programme:

When the hell will UTV sort out their two-way graphics? How difficult is it to convert the picture frames for each feed from 4:3 to 16:9?

What the hell was Robo-Fadden doing in Ballymena? Are there too few reporters at Havoc House they send their Derry-based reporter instead? (a litle later) Ah, the trail was heard at Coleraine Courthouse.

Oh dear, Logie getting all Jeremy Kyle-like again with scenes of a fight at a GAA match. And obviously they are struggling to find things for Siobhan McGarry to do since the UTV Life axe, she did a report on the only football teams UTV Live viewers are allowed to know anything about - Linfield and Man U.

Just watched it back on u.tv I saw that report and I didn't even notice the mistake! I was making the dinner at the time though so I was only half watching it!

The weather forecast just after the 1355 bulletin was read out-of-vision by Pamela Ballantine - does anyone know if Funtime Frankie or whoever is presenting the 1800 or late weather forecasts still does this bulletin?

Also noticed Newsline have integrated the signed news update into the 1330 bulletin - I'm not aware if it was mentioned in any thread here so apologies if I'm repeating old news.

Noel was on his own on tonight's Newsline - does this mean if Donna or Sarah are not available for the 1830 bulletin, the male host does the programme solo (and vice versa?)

Good to see Gavin Andrews presenting the sport too

Was it just me, or did the footage of the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis shown on UTV News today look "filmic"? Apart from a short PTC at the end from Ken Reid, that is.

Good to see a substantial news bulletin on a Saturday on UTV with plenty of content and actual news. And good to see Gillian Porter still looking glamorous and blingy

Bye bye Claire McCollum...

A shame UTV are losing the always likeable Claire, I wonder if she'll take a similar route as Graham Little - maybe work with Sky or Setanta, perhaps still do freelance stuff with UTV. Then again, there's not much in the way of sports events for the Havoc House lot to cover coming up this summer...

I've a feeling Siobhan McGarry may take up some of Claire's sports work, given she's been filing reports for the sportsdesk for a few weeks. I'm not sure if they ever filled that sports reporter vacancy they advertised around the time the voluntary redundancies though.

Come to think of it, there's quite a few reporters I haven't seen on UTV Live in the past few weeks - seems the only ones still around are Jamie Delargy, Ken Reid, Niall Donnelly, Jane Loughrey, Robo-Fadden and Gareth Wilkinson in the North West, Sarah Dobson, Sharon O'Neill and Sinead Johnston doing news reporters; Adrian Logan, Neil Brittain and Siobhan McGarry on sport; and Pamela Ballantine and Alison Fleming keeping with the "Life" stuff.

No sign of the likes of Letitia Gwynne, David Morgan, Tracey Magee, Vicki Hawthorne, Julie O'Connor (who I think is now producing the last series of "Insight"), Brian Black (interestingly, an environment story tonight was covered by Jamie Delargy)... or even Marc Mallett.

This is Ivan Little's last week as a UTV reporter - doubt it myself, but it would be nice to see a tribute to him on Friday's programme - if there was nothing for Jeanie Johnston, it's unlikely Big Ivan will get one.

Interesting that UTV put a disclaimer about its editorial decision to show some of the milder footage on badger baiting on the programme tonight.

EDIT: Nice logic during the sports segment: rather than using the off-air coverage from TG4 for GAA coverage, they took it from last night's "RTE News on TWO" with "RTE TWO" DOG intact - why didn't they get the off-air from TG4? And do they ever credit the pictures to RTE/TG4 like they do with the rare times they get pictures from Broadcasting House?

Very bizarre business on tonight's UTV Live; it jumped straight from the end of Gareth Wilkinson's report in Ballymena to a two-way with Niall Donnelly outside the Wrightbus factory without any lead-in - the two-way was an obvious pre-recorded as it was quite badly edited.

Ironic really that two of tonight's main stories were business-driven but no sign of Jamie Delargy (he still did his blog today, though!). And it seems Siobhan McGarry hasn't been fully seconded to the sport department as she did the house price fall report.

Noticed a new-style aston for viewers' texts or messages responding to the badger baiting story last night. And they cocked up on identifying the person they interviewed on the introduction of ASBO tags, they had to issue a correction.

And another point. Why does Sharon O'Neill start off all her reports with a single sentence?

Oh, and blonde bombshell Marc Mallett was back on tonight (and taking up a lot of camera time on his report!), so fear not MM fans, he's still around. Probably waiting in the wings for Paul Clark to booger off on holiday so young Marc gets his moment in the chair...

Very arty report with an apostrophe-less Brian O'Driscoll from Neil Brittain, even Massive Attack "Teardrop" in the mix. And of course, Pancake Day giving an excuse for Pamela Ballantine to use the word "t0sser" and the phrase "wrist action" on prime-time TV.

And an advert break between the weather and the ITV Evening News (including that awful Abbey Insurance advert), when was the last time that happened? They could have fitted more news stories in to UTV Live, but that's Havoc House for you - profit before programmes.

(Edited - fell foul of the swear filter twice)