GB News: Launch

[william]

Still one too many breakfast presenters, I feel, everyone struggling to get a word in.

[Londoner]

Has the lighting been improved or is that just a morning thing?

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1405056562465476608

[Inspector Sands]

It all comes over as they spent most of the budget on the talent and not on the basics, such as producing the output in the first place. It's all and good spending good money on Andrew Neil, Simon McCoy, Kirsty Gallacher etc, but then not spend money on a sound desk and a sound engineer who would be able to work on the sound issues instead of an automated desk.

Thing is you need both - experienced and well paid people both in front and behind camera. Having one without the other doesn't work. Even if it's just a few senior experienced hands leading a team of newbies at least there's some leadership and guidance to how things should be done.


Is it just a presenter budget issue. My understanding is that their investment is £60 million over 3 years. They've got carriage on Freeview, uplink on Astra and Freesat/Sky slots, space on Virgin Media and a playout contract with Red Bee.... that's got to be a big chunk of that.

[AllWillBeWell]

Was the blue cushion and blue LED strips there before?

Edit: I think it was but has perhaps been turned up brighter.

[Langham]

At least all the presenters had a bit of jollity, knowing the 9am handover is very awkward! Literally just saw the GBB presenters leave the breakfast bar while Colin and Mercy were previewing their show. It shows a pressing need for an ad-break or weather right before the TOTH.

[Brekkie]

There's still the major elephant in the room - no news.

Indeed, and that does seem like a pretty noteworthy issue for a channel called 'GB News'.

You'd be rather disappointed to find no baking on 'The Great British Bake-Off' and no antiques on 'Antiques Roadshow'... :lol:

The lack of bees on the Great British Sewing Bee is somewhat disappointing.

Once they have the technical issues sorted their biggest issue is it is just boring. Endless interviews and debates usually are on TV.

[Inspector Sands]

As I said in the old place, you need plenty of time (weeks/months) to commission, test, debug and dry run, and they only appeared to actually start the fit out in March/April.
The chickens have come home to roost.

Yes and a few weeks ago a few of us on here including ourselves were getting some flack for questioning their readyness.

I reckon those progress videos were actually accurate after all

[Ste]

Israel/Palestine conflict mentioned on the ticker, is this the first mention of any foreign news story?

[Worzel]

At least all the presenters had a bit of jollity, knowing the 9am handover is very awkward! Literally just saw the GBB presenters leave the breakfast bar while Colin and Mercy were previewing their show. It shows a pressing need for an ad-break or weather right before the TOTH.

And this choice of shot, whether intentional or not is not particularly good.



Colin and Mercy would be better off moving to where the guests sit in the soft area for the 9am changeover so we don't see the Breakfast presenters walking off set. It looks very awkward indeed.

According to GB fails there have already been a few gaffes this morning already. It tends to get worse as the day goes on so we shall see what happens later. The sound levels are still all over the shop and can't say I can say much has changed re. the lighting (to me anyway).

Do we know if they're going to take PMQs?

[thecorrector]

Another zoom fiasco just now with Charlie Mullins doing his hair

https://twitter.com/gamray/status/140506...70114?s=20

[william]

At least all the presenters had a bit of jollity, knowing the 9am handover is very awkward! Literally just saw the GBB presenters leave the breakfast bar while Colin and Mercy were previewing their show. It shows a pressing need for an ad-break or weather right before the TOTH.

It would work better if someone made space at the end of the table for either Colin or Mercy to preview their show about 10-15 minutes beforehand instead, and then have an ad-break where they can do do a clean swap of presenters. They're making it harder for themselves at the moment.

The good thing about their situation: as there are so, so many things to fix, they'll get a good feeling each time they can cross one of the list. The problem: as soon as you unsnag something, you immediately notice a couple of other issues you'd forgotten about…

[Keith]

If it's true that GBN's sound mixer only has 8 channels and they're using fold back speakers in the studio then it's not surprising they've been having so many sound issues. Surely a fairly quick solution would be to upgrade the sound mixer to a 16 channel version. With the additional channels they could then add one or more (preferably wired) desk mics as a backup. The spare channels would presumably also allow them to prepare the mics of guests whilst other mics are in use, and avoid having to quickly re-patch (or similar). I imagine the past few days behind the scenes have been rather interesting to say the least.

[CameronYoung]

Israel/Palestine conflict mentioned on the ticker, is this the first mention of any foreign news story?

Depends how you classify the Australian trade deal. Anyway, I think this is the first major foreign story not involving the UK to break since Sunday night.

[JayTV]

Tech wise, things seem a bit more smooth this morning. Shifting the camera angle for the Great British Breakfast seems to have worked too - it's much brighter.

The problem now is that the lack of content stands out even more. At 6:05 we had Nana and Darren having a slanging match about whether care home staff should be made to get the vaccination. Who wants that at that time of the morning?

Definitely improvements in terms of presentation though -- which is good, but sadly it might be too late. I can't help but think that any bump in the ratings may just be because people want to have a laugh!

[LI4M]

I do like the idea of the programme handover and they do work very well in the primetime block on MSNBC in the US and throughout the day on radio stations like LBC.

They make one programme on the schedule flow into the other and can be done in a very slick way.

On GBN, it needs a little work, but it could be doable. Perhaps the Colin and Mercy could have been stood up pre-titles, in a direction with the breakfast presenters out of shot? Throw in a slightly longer title sequence and when the programme starts proper, the pair could be on the sofa with a freshly cleared breakfast table behind.

Perhaps this is one thing that will improve when the 'newswall' area becomes available?