Unsurprisingly, tonight's BBC Channel Islands News was dominated the Jersey historic abuse enquiry/report. It was a fully separate programme, rather than handing over to the latter part of Spotlight.
On Friday, it was promoted as a special bulletin dedicated to the Jersey enquiry. It's rare CI get to opt out for the full 30 minutes as they rush through the stories before going back to Plymouth at the mid junction.
I know that until fairly recently BBC Jersey's connection to the rest of the BBC infrastructure was a bit suspect, but now that they have better connectivity how feasible would it be to have most of the packages that make up the main Spotlight programme available to play out from the Jersey gallery?
That way they can be flexible on the length of the local portion of the programme and avoid a messy opt back part way through, playing out the packages produced by Plymouth to fill up the programme? Maybe rebrand it back to Spotlight Channel Islands so that the outcues aren't an issue. I guess they could even use the STV approach for doing shared lives if they really had to.
The PQ during the CI bulletin is still awful. You can tell the difference between the washed out SD quality and the downscaled HD to 576i on Spotlight.
I know that until fairly recently BBC Jersey's connection to the rest of the BBC infrastructure was a bit suspect, but now that they have better connectivity how feasible would it be to have most of the packages that make up the main Spotlight programme available to play out from the Jersey gallery?
That way they can be flexible on the length of the local portion of the programme and avoid a messy opt back part way through, playing out the packages produced by Plymouth to fill up the programme? Maybe rebrand it back to Spotlight Channel Islands so that the outcues aren't an issue. I guess they could even use the STV approach for doing shared lives if they really had to.
It's an odd situation because although BBC Channel Islands has links to Plymouth, they might as well be a different country when it comes to actual news content and relevance. It makes little sense as it is playing out the rest of Spotlight, but to actually play out the Spotlight packages from Jersey unfortunately makes even less sense. Now that BBC Channel Islands has access to other versions of BBC content, I'd suggest simulcasting the news channel would probably make more sense than Spotlight.
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The PQ during the CI bulletin is still awful. You can tell the difference between the washed out SD quality and the downscaled HD to 576i on Spotlight.
BBC CI has improved in a lot of ways. Their vision mixer is one of the best in the regional BBC network, and their infrastructure is being improved a lot, but their studio cameras are still the same old Panasonic SD cameras on poles they've had since the early-mid 2000s I believe.
Why is it that Look East from Cambridge smoothly manages to opt back to Norwich during the 6:30 perfectly every time, yet BBC Oxford and CI both often have long pauses and holds on the sting they play out, as if they can't time it properly? Sometimes I've seen fifteen seconds of hold from Oxford, but Cambridge ALWAYS seems to have exactly enough content to take them up to the point they hand back. Norwich plays a sting ahead of a 'coming up' sequence when they opt back which I imagine makes things slightly smoother, but the presenter is never left dragging the final link out.
Why is it that Look East from Cambridge smoothly manages to opt back to Norwich during the 6:30 perfectly every time, yet BBC Oxford and CI both often have long pauses and holds on the sting they play out, as if they can't time it properly? Sometimes I've seen fifteen seconds of hold from Oxford, but Cambridge ALWAYS seems to have exactly enough content to take them up to the point they hand back. Norwich plays a sting ahead of a 'coming up' sequence when they opt back which I imagine makes things slightly smoother, but the presenter is never left dragging the final link out.
It relies on the main opt's gallery keeping the sub-opts gallery director up to date with timings on the main programme as it's going on, which in a lot of cases they don't. Most of the time the timings match what is on the running order, but if the main opt has a couple of lives, they're far too busy trying to keep their own programme to time, never mind trying to keep a sub-opt in the loop. Some directors are actually very good at trying, and some just don't bother. So really what ends up happening is the sub-opt director (in Jersey's case anyway) is literally just watching the main opt go out, and trying to find an ok part to crash back into after the sting.
I was surprised Spotlight didn't cover the Jersey inquiry at all this evening. We'd heard a lot about the case previously on the south west version.
Saying that, if the Channel Islands have their own programme, there's no need for it to be mentioned.
Thats the problem with part time sub opts, you end up with strange news agendas where stories drop in and out of the running order depending on how important it is and whether there is a sub opt taking place at that point
Why is it that Look East from Cambridge smoothly manages to opt back to Norwich during the 6:30 perfectly every time, yet BBC Oxford and CI both often have long pauses and holds on the sting they play out, as if they can't time it properly? Sometimes I've seen fifteen seconds of hold from Oxford, but Cambridge ALWAYS seems to have exactly enough content to take them up to the point they hand back. Norwich plays a sting ahead of a 'coming up' sequence when they opt back which I imagine makes things slightly smoother, but the presenter is never left dragging the final link out.
It relies on the main opt's gallery keeping the sub-opts gallery director up to date with timings on the main programme as it's going on, which in a lot of cases they don't. Most of the time the timings match what is on the running order, but if the main opt has a couple of lives, they're far too busy trying to keep their own programme to time, never mind trying to keep a sub-opt in the loop. Some directors are actually very good at trying, and some just don't bother. So really what ends up happening is the sub-opt director (in Jersey's case anyway) is literally just watching the main opt go out, and trying to find an ok part to crash back into after the sting.
So I think the answer is that Norwich are probably more disciplined than Southampton and Plymouth then...
When the Cambridge opt started at Look East, both sides treated the opt-out (which was later in the show, with the start pan-regional) as a branded 'Close Up' more-local news belt, with the opt-back usually on the still-to-come element. This meant both sides created fixed duration news-belt sub-opt running orders. I suspect if you start the show split, and join at a fixed time, that discipline is trickier, as the two halves are not doing 'the same thing'
That said - Norwich and Cambridge switched to the 'split opening' format a while back - maybe they just still remember the importance of it.
I wonder if Plymouth/Jersey and Southampton/Oxford have 4-wires between their respective galleries. Look East certainly used to (well it was a PTB feed and a 'control circuit' (RIP) )
Oxford/Southampton have a number of four wires between them and can listen to each others production talkback and switched talkback as required. In practice the Opt duration is agreed before air by the two producers. Both galleries work towards it but depending on late arriving packages, lives, overruns on interviews etc they occasionally drift apart. If the timings are just a bit off then OOVs are added, dropped or rewritten to make the timings work. Occasionally you might find a whole package gets shoved in. In extremis, Oxford have (or certainly had) a holding sequence at the end of the Opt sting. I think it's only been to air once or twice. And that's when it went very wrong indeed (ISTR a legalled package was running in the South, which Oxford couldn't join midway)