Three of the BBC One nations were running the same programme schedule last night. And at the end of the evening we had Weather for the Week Ahead at 12.55am and the handover to the BBC News Channel down for 1am. Perfect conditions for a top-of-the-hour handover to the News Channel.
Well, you’d think so. But, as on many occasions, the execution left a lot to be desired – in some parts of the country.
On BBC One Scotland, the decision was taken – quite rightly – to drop some trails from the schedule, so that they could meet the BBC News Channel bang on the top-of-the-hour. A good result for the viewer.
Network BBC One (arguably the worst offender when it comes to messy late-night handovers to the News Channel) and BBC One Wales decided to stick with the originally planned batch of trails before and after Weather for the Week Ahead.
The result: they join the News Channel rather clumsily during the report for the top story – needlessly depriving viewers of the opening headlines, which provide the context for the programme.
So – why did Network and Wales not drop some trails, so that they could meet the News Channel at 1am? Were those trails so strategically crucial (at 1am) that they couldn’t be dropped? Is there some sort of silly internal politics about the removal of trails?
One would like to think that a channel director would not be happy with a messy handover like this.
Whatever it is that’s causing these transitions to end up a mess more often than not, needs looking at. No matter what the time of day, even a small TV operation would strive for a higher level of professionalism than this.
You wouldn’t contemplate doing this at 10pm. It’s not acceptable a few hours later either.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: BBC One Scotland ident. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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