BBC Newsline: Reith and New Virtual Set

Updated: 25th July 2019.

Just over a week since the BBC Reith font was rolled out on national and regional BBC TV news programmes, BBC Newsline continues to rebel, sticking with the old Helvetica graphics. But, it wouldn’t be BBC Newsline if there wasn’t some inconsistency – on and off, they’ve been using Reith for visual journalism since last Monday. On tonight’s edition though, any illustrative graphics used Helvetica. Though a new BBC Newsline Sport graphic was in Reith.

I’m sure that pressure is being brought to bear by London to get the new lower-third and bug graphics implemented as soon as possible.

Whilst we may be left waiting for BBC Reith to make it across the Irish Sea, BBC Newsline had a pleasing alternative up its sleeve – last Monday they introduced us to a new virtual weather set. Previously, only the sport segment in the early evening weekday edition of the programme made use of a virtual set. Since last Monday, the sport news has been presented on location – live and recorded.

The new weather set-up looks quite nifty. We start off with a wide shot. The weather presenter then walks across to his virtual TV screen, with the camera gradually zooming in to provide us with the more conventional view of the weather maps. Towards the end of the forecast, the camera zooms out to reveal five virtual columns animating into view, revealing the forecast for the next five days.

The only complaint I’d have here is that the days aren’t terribly legible in the five-day forecast graphic.

One minor blooper during the programme – not sure if it’s the floor manager or a camera operator – but they came into shot very briefly during the introduction to the weather (far right of image below).

UPDATE: and here’s an example of the new Reith font (and white/red animation) in use on the programme on 25th July 2019 – whilst the lower-thirds and titles remain unchanged.

Acknowledgements