International News Presentation: Past and Present

TV2 Fyn picked up a new set in the last month or so - coinciding with the launch of a new daily news program on its local digital news channel. A few different photos of the set are available on Instagram. You can also see a very quick - blink and you'll miss it - look at the start of this compilation video.

US Election 2016, N24, Germany

In addition to his duties at Noticiero Telemundo, José Díaz-Balart is now the host of NBC Nightly News on Saturdays. In other trivia, Fidel Castro was his uncle (through marriage).

I wonder if this is the first instance anywhere of someone anchoring the news in two languages at the same time (well, not literally at the same time, but you know what I mean ).

From Italy, the new look of RAI Tre's national news (TG3), introduced last month -- note the Tagesschau ripoff at the 1:12 mark:

The studio is nice, but those titles... They feel a bit 1990s, don't they?

Extremely rare - but not unique. I'm sure when Channel TV provided a weekly summary of news in Portuguese (for the hotel workers) that may have been done by a bi-lingual presenter on the station.

And there may have been crossover with English/Gaelic with news presenters on RTE in Ireland.

Indeed, current Six-One presenter Sharon Ní Bheoláin concurrently presented Nuacht RTÉ and RTÉ News in the late 90s (and perhaps today, on occasion?)

Not quite the same, but here's a bizarre 1978 Antenne 2 news bulletin, live from London (presumably TV Centre), co presented in French by Angela Rippon. (Angela had hosted Eurovision, obviously partly in French, the previous year)

In the 1990s, Norman Macleod would sometimes present the Gaelic news programmes as well as North Tonight on Grampian.

For a nation so well-known for its industrial design and fashion, Italy is surprisingly lackluster when it comes to broadcast design.

There have been exceptions, however. I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again: I really like the look used by RAI Due's Tg2 in the late 1980s and early '90s. It's simple, elegant, and in in many ways, ahead of its time:

I remember speaking to a colleague who worked for SKY when it launched in Italy. He was brought over alongside many BSkyB guys because the Sky execs were so shocked at how poor the general standards were in the industry. It was put down largely to RAI being the only real player in the industry for many years. This created a profound sense of complacency and terrible standards, such as shaky cameras in news reports and peculiar presentational styles. Sky TG24 broke the mould and helped to raise the bar a little (at least aesthetically - the content is still awful) Sky was also the first channel to take weather forecasting seriously. Until then, you would be lucky to see a weather forecast even once per day!