I am starting to agree, particularly as it seems so much of an effort to some companies. Continuity announcements used to be a totally different animal to what they are now. As they stand, they are pointless.

Get rid of them now.

Get rid of the Channel 5 annos?

NOOO - they are the best thing on the channel!!!!!!!

>I am starting to agree, particularly as it seems so much of an effort to some companies. Continuity announcements used to be a totally different animal to what they are now. As they stand, they are pointless.
>
>Get rid of them now.

Just watch some BBC CHOICE and you'll see how great it can be...

Hang on? Shouldn't that be awful?

I've seen clips of the invision stuff on Choice in Wales/NI/Scotland and it works wonderfully. In fact, in general, BBC continuity is informative and helpful.

C4 on the other hand take another approach - sponsored shows don't tend to have continuity to them. This of course makes sense as noted.

ITV on the other hand... Let me share two good examples - Carlton and LWT both make good use of continuity, even with 'Coming Next' captions. GMG's Leeds based service shows how bad and pointless it can be. What really is the point of "This is ITV, in the heart of your region" announcements. What do they do? What do they say? Even BBC ONE doesn't use announcements like that (though sadly BBC CHOICE does...)

Yeah you're right Chris, keep C4 and C5's. Buy YTV's announcements are so bad that I get a nice warm glow before a programme if they balls it up and have no announcement at all...

The Point of Announcers

1. (Not only to) Introduce Programmes (but)
2. Hold next programme
3. Point a forthcoming programme
4. Re-inforce Station Branding (Spoken word as well as music and pictures have stronger impact)
5. Station trailers
6. Fact pact/booklet/audience annos
7. Announce late programme changes
8. Apologise during breakdowns
9. Take up any slack time in the schedule
10. Read weathers/airwatches/etc
11. Telephone rundowns for the blind
12. Programme narration
13. Audio Description (digital)
14. Station corporates
15. Whatever it takes
16. Constantly endure your negative views

I thank you

>The Point of Announcers

Is to make announcements live (and to make slip-ups now and again so we know the are live).

Unfortunately this is financially prohibitive for many channels.

It makes the station seem .... so much friendlier ;-) Spesho C5

The reason why YTV annos in particular are useless...
>2. Hold next programme

Which YTV don't do.

>3. Point a forthcoming programme

Which YTV don't do.

>4. Re-inforce Station Branding (Spoken word as well as music and pictures have stronger impact)

Which YTV don't do.

>6. Fact pact/booklet/audience annos

Which YTV don't do.

>7. Announce late programme changes

Which YTV don't do a lot of the time.

>8. Apologise during breakdowns

Which YTV don't do. (they leave a black space)

>9. Take up any slack time in the schedule

Which YTV don't do.

>10. Read weathers/airwatches/etc

Which YTV don't do.

>11. Telephone rundowns for the blind

Which YTV don't do.

>12. Programme narration

Which YTV don't do.

>16. Constantly endure your negative views

YTV don't care.

>>The Point of Announcers
>
>Is to make announcements live (and to make slip-ups now and again so we know the are live).
>
>Unfortunately this is financially prohibitive for many channels.

What utter tripe. No way is it financially prohibitive. Big ITV concerns got rid of live announcements for no other reason than greed. Pure and simple. We're only talking about a few thousand pounds a year here, for the wages of a few more announcers to cover all the stations. If it were financially prohibitive companies wouldn't spend millions every year on duff new graphics that are worse than the duff graphics that went before.

Surely the existence of the continuity announcer is exonerated every time the woman on Channel 4 declares, "Now on 4 its time to Smack The Pony", which is just soooo much funnier than anything in the following thirty minutes.

When the next ITV idents are introduced, an event that can be only months away, surely they could include a musical sting and a permanent voice-over with a station announcer saying "Part of the ITV network, this is Granada".
Then the on-duty announcer sitting in Leeds need not bother with the name of the station at all and could then say what ever he or she needs to say about the next programme.
Then it would not disjointed and seem logical.
Perhaps, for the sake of variety, the recorded ident announcer voice could be a man's when a woman is the on-duty announcer and a woman's when it's a man.

Yeah that would work. Alternatively YTV/Granada media could just get their fingers out and employ 2 annos per channel in addition to the team at Leeds, which would cover prime-time, and have the generics during the day. SURELY this wouldn't take too much of a cut out of their over-inflated profits? Let's see, 30 grand a year times 2 times 2 again for the number of external stations coming from Leeds (Border can pay for their own), 120,000 pounds per year. A company who spends millions every other year re-inventing themselves is hardly going to miss this sort of cash. And they don't even have to pay for studio facilities -- they have perfectly good news box-studios lying unused for most of the day.

And let's face it, Leeds employs 5 or 6 announcers. They could quite easily get away with 3. So that takes the bill down to 30,000 per year. Come on you idiots, if I can see this, why can't you?

>And let's face it, Leeds employs 5 or 6 announcers. They could quite easily get away with 3. So that takes the bill down to 30,000 per year. Come on you idiots, if I can see this, why can't you?


Leaving 3 left? Nah. Just record the whole weeks annoucements on minidisc and you could do it in the day with one person. Something goes wrong? Something changes? So? They don't bother now...

It would never happen though would it? I mean, that would mean sacking some YTV people for a change. That would *never* do, would it?

>It would never happen though would it? I mean, that would mean sacking some YTV people for a change. That would *never* do, would it?

Well, sack all the ones who didn't originate from YTV then.

Oh hang on, he moved back to LWT...

>It would never happen though would it? I mean, that would mean sacking some YTV people for a change. That would *never* do, would it?

This is getting pathetic.

Yeah maybe you're right, maybe we are being a little hard on everybody's favourite empire-building Gyngell-employer.

But answer me this; in a world where everyone wants to spend money, and in a company (Granada) where 100% of Newcastle-based continuity staff, 100% of their Manchester-based counterparts and 100% of Carlisle's, and 0% of Leeds' (in fact their's has increased, although fair play that's to be expected) do Leeds employ TWICE as many announcers as they need? Somewhat goes against the grain, doesn't it? Somebody somewhere in Leeds obviously knows what strings to pull...

Being serious here for a second, I'm sure I, NF and all the other folks who have slammed YTV here over the months and years would be far happier if YTV and their barons at Granada Media just pulled their finger out, provided an acceptable, good quality presentation to all the regions served by the broadcast centre, with regional announcements which don't break down, and all the other little niceties that all 4 stations (including YTV) actually did put out before this monster was created, and cut out the flippant "ha ha you don't have a telly company up there you stupid thick geordies" sarky attitude you have towards the TT region (they don't quite say that but Leeds staff have quite frequently said to me "well you are a very small region so you don't matter as much" (virtually a direct quote of a woman working in regional affairs down there)), then we might not hate you so much.

I agree, when YTV took Tyne Tees over I wasn't overly concerned, they promised investment and to be honest Tyne Tees had been run down for years with poor technology, a sub-standard studio, poor standard of presentation, low number of network commissions etc and virtualy no originality anymore. YTV promised a brighter future and help for their smaller sibbling. What TTTV got was a one-off investment in City Road and Bellasis studios so that they could continue making decent local output, but then that was it. YTV management were completely bereft of orginality and were happy to spend no money on the station. They also approached the ITC (informaly) to close down the TTTV operations and extend YTV north with opt-outs. Sadly though things have improved a bit under Granada, Tyne Tees is still just basicaly a local opt-out in the minds of YTV.

Yes, this is all very true. Tyne Tees' presentation was poor, mainly down to a lack of investment. But only in the sense that the seams were (and still are) visible due to knackered technology they had had since the 70's (and possibly earlier). Who could forget the microphone clunks or the noticable sound glitch every time continuity faded one source into another. But the staff themselves were totally committed to serving the region the best way they could, and I would take issue with the lack of originality to an extent -- Tyne Tees were never afraid to try new ideas on NE viewers.

Sadly, it was this lack of technology which was probably their downfall. YTV probably took one look at their 70's advert streamers and the video freeze-frames and 16mm slides still used for production slides and the use of chalk-boards as countdown timers and thought "there's absolutely nothing we can leave here". And so the slow killing off of the station began. And continues to this day from what Damian has been saying if you read between the lines.

This does not excuse the actions of the suits though. The technology may have been poor, the staff were not.

DO AWAY WITH ANNOUNCEMENT ON MOST ITV REGIONS AS WE ALL KNOW IT USED TO WORK BUT A COUPLE OF ESTABLISHMENTS ESPECIALLY HAVE NOW MADE THEM POINTLESS AND U KNOW WHO I MEAN

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In spite of the fact that ITV has cut the number of continuity announcers, the growth in satellite, cable and digital must have meant loads more jobs.
Continuity announcers, stop complaining!
You've never had it so good.

>In spite of the fact that ITV has cut the number of continuity announcers, the growth in satellite, cable and digital must have meant loads more jobs.

A lot of channels don't employ announcers but get voice over people to do a big batch all at once....