BBC World and CNN Need To Get Back To Basics – It’s The Coverage Of Live Events, Stupid!

Philip Stone August 14, 2006

For all the magnificent coverage that BBC World and CNN have provided from the Middle East in the past month both networks are increasingly guilty of forgetting their roots – that it is live event coverage of news conferences, speeches, and crucial UN votes that put them originally on the map – rather than packaged reports -- and their ever stricter adherence to set program schedules are diminishing that coverage. Look no further than the terrible live coverage provided of the UN ceasefire resolution vote.
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In discussing “live events” we are talking about coverage of live news conferences, UN speeches, speeches by government leaders etc; we are not talking about the network’s own people live on the ground covering the news of the day. The problem is that live events coverage, as defined above, is more and more getting cut off in mid stream rather than going full length, not because there is nothing more newsworthy to come from a particular event but rather because program schedule times must be satisfied.

CNN International (CNNI) and BBC World have set program schedules, usually 30 minutes of news on the hour, followed by other programming for the next 30 minutes. At peak times the 30-minute news block goes the entire hour. What is happening more and more is that live event coverage within those news blocks are being cut off in midstream; the anchor suddenly appears and sums up what we have just heard. In most cases, one could look at the clock and bet it is within five minutes of the half-hour or the hour. The program has to wrap up and hand-on to the next scheduled program.

That’s not to say that during Middle East coverage that schedules weren’t sometimes thrown away and the news programming continued, but by and large those half-hour blocks were adhered to when possible – especially after the first few days -- even if that meant cutting off live events.

The best example for this gripe comes from the coverage Friday night/Saturday morning (US time/ European time) of the UN ceasefire resolution. The UN met around 7 p.m. Eastern/1 a.m. European time.

Our household was tuned into CNNI. At the top of the hour, following a 30-minute sports program, CNNI turned over to CNN US and to Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room reporting from Jerusalem. Normally that would have been an interesting experience seeing how CNN produces the news for the US to get ratings – that razzmatazz is so different from the staid reporting of CNN International.

As part of the Situation Room the program displays three or four mute video shots of live events in addition to having Wolf talking. Suddenly we saw in one such screen that Kofi Annan had begun his address. But we couldn’t hear Kofi, only Wolf telling us that “we” are going to monitor what’s going on.

Well we wanted to know directly what was going on so we switched to BBC World and there was Kofi speaking live. Great! But after five minutes, with Kofi about halfway finished, suddenly he goes mute and up shows diplomatic correspondent Bridgett Kendall wrapping up what he has said. Why on earth is she interrupting his speech with a wrap-up when he is only half-finished? After the wrap-up the program turns to its New York and London anchors and that is the end of Kofi.

Our household was stunned. We wanted to hear more of Kofi’s speech, so we took a wild chance and turned over to EuroNews, and couldn’t believe our luck that there he was. So we settled back to listen, but then just five minutes later on comes the announcer to say that in a couple of minutes they are going to break away from the UN to tell us the rest of the world news. And sure enough that is what they did.

So we clicked back to CNN – no Kofi, BBC World—no Kofi, and then to EuroNews - no Kofi. So much for live news event coverage, the very type of coverage that made the 24-hour networks!

Now we could understand that producers at CNN US probably figured it would be a ratings disaster if Wolf stopped his program in mid-stream and turned to “boring” UN speeches. The US, after all, is a competitive news business, and ratings mean everything. But was there not a senior CNNI producer in Atlanta, London, or Hong Kong who could have made the decision that once the UN started up that CNNI should break away from Wolf and show the UN proceedings live?

As for BBC World, this was all happening in the 7 p.m. Eastern time block. Could it be that this particular program block is produced primarily with the New York City audience in mind where BBC World after many years of trying has finally made it onto the cable system there? They had a New York and London anchor and while they showed a bit of Kofi maybe they felt they had to do other things, too, to keep that New York audience watching their premier 7 p.m. newscast? So much for BBC World – maybe that particular time block should be renamed BBC New York!

So back to Wolf, we see in one of his video feeds that Condoleezza Rice is speaking. And still he doesn’t go there. He is talking and talking, but finally he says that Rice is speaking and let’s listen in. And so we got, from that point on, her entire speech. But the moment she was finished, it was UN cutaway time again.

Next up was the French foreign minister, and it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say, since it was the Americans and the French that co-wrote and sponsored the resolution. We could see from one of Wolf’s video screens the man was talking, but it was mute. Turn to BBC and EuroNews and they were off the story completely.

Everyone then cut in when the vote was taken. At least we got that live!

But what was almost comical was that turning to BBC World again, the anchor was discussing events with the diplomatic correspondent while in the background screen you saw Margaret Beckett, the UK foreign minister, giving her speech. Now one would have thought that if anyone was going to cover the UK foreign minister live it would be BBC World but no – talking heads were more important than live coverage of her speech.

We never did get to hear the speech by the Qatar deputy prime minister/foreign minister on how the Arab states didn’t like the resolution but would go for it, and we never got to hear many other speeches (we caught the Greek foreign minister on EuroNews).

And on BBC World when the 7:30 p.m. Eastern/0130 European time program schedule came they put on the scheduled taped Hardtalk Extra interview show with a sports personality. The UN and the Middle East were just blown away.  It made one think that BBC World needs to amend its tagline “Putting News First” to “Putting News First, when it fits conveniently into pre-planned program schedules”

This writer is old enough to remember when there was no BBC World or CNN International and in Europe all we had was CNN Headline News combined with CNN US. At that time if there was a live event on CNN US it got covered in full. There was no breaking away from a Presidential news conference, speech, and the like. It was that type of live programming that earned the network its reputation. Even in those days the network obviously had set programming schedules with cable systems leaving for locally interspersed commercials, and there would often appear on-screen an announcement that some cable systems would now break away and then a couple of minutes later a notice that systems were rejoining, but the live event coverage continued no matter what.

As CNN International has become more successful, and has scheduled a variety of feature programs on the half-hour (Business Traveler, Living Golf and the like) often with set sponsors, one can sense that while the control room certainly has the right and power to override schedules and continue with what they’re showing – and they do from time to time -- it seems as though they do so reluctantly, probably for commercial reasons.

As pointed out earlier the 24-hour news networks have really done an outstanding job in their Middle East coverage. They must have spent millions what with all the staff they have had to move into the area and as viewers we should be very grateful for their superlative job.

But sometimes with success comes a forgetfulness of what got them there in the first place. The 24-hour news roots are firmly entrenched in live event coverage -- news conferences, votes, speeches and the like – for those events often become the news of the day which anyone can package. The UN ceasefire session was a natural to be shown whole and live, and those feeds were there for the taking.

It seems tragic in a way that with so much time and effort spent in reporting from the war zone that it was that part of the story half a world away in New York that let them down.

Both networks really need to review why.

ftm Follow Up & Comments

BBC World And CNNI Both Miss THE Iranian Announcement - April 4, 2007

Serves them both right! Time and again ftm has complained that CNNI and BBC World have forgotten their roots – full, uninterrupted coverage of live events – instead of constant reviews and guest “talking heads”. Well, they both got nailed Wednesday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and they missed “live” the big announcement.

Both 24-hour cable news networks, to their credit, carried the Iranian President’s news conference from the beginning, supplying decent translation from the Farsi, no doubt waiting for when he might talk about the 15 British sailors being held. But the Iranian President apparently has never heard of the “inverted pyramid” process in news writing where the most important items are on top, and neither has he taken to the “western” way that the headline should go at the beginning of an announcement; instead he gave a history lesson to the world. Indeed a pretty boring history lesson, but it did include some berating of the British for their intrusion and the awarding of medals to the commander of the soldiers that captured the British, so maybe the control rooms thought that was that.

 So after about 45 minutes of this, and with the top of the hour approaching, both networks figured they had had enough of this, obviously there was no more story, so both brought on the talking heads to review what had happened so far, but they did keep the live picture with the President still talking on the split screen. So there on BBC World was the anchor and the diplomatic correspondent having a lovely chat about what the President had said, and what he didn’t say – that was very important to the diplomatic correspondent – when suddenly one heard an incredulous female voice utter in background, “They’ve released all the sailors!” Whether that was the anchor who just got the news in her earpiece from the control room and was absolutely amazed at what she had been told, or whether it was the translator we don’t know, but within a few second the anchor had recovered to say there was the breaking news that the President was releasing all the sailors.

So, immediately switch to CNNI. Their anchor was still continuing with his review for what seemed an eternity, when suddenly up came the yellow breaking news box saying the sailors had been released and, one must say, the anchor stepped smartly into that and along came chief international correspondent Christiane Armanpour with her analysis.

The President’s comments were the very last he made before opening up the news conference. Maybe there is some merit to the phrase, “Save the best until last”. And maybe CNNI and BBC World will let live events run their natural course from now on.

Incidentally there was another miss for CNNI. BBC World returned to covering the President’s news conference live and one of the journalists made a speech complaining specifically about the activities and “insults” of CNN’s Armanpour apparently from a recent trip to Iran. This went on for a few seconds and then BBC World cut away without comment. Switch immediately to CNNI and the talking heads are still at it and they missed it, or maybe they didn’t particularly want to carry that?)