Tag Archive for 'bbc'
Top Gear returned to BBC Two’s Sunday night schedules tonight after an extended absence due to Richard Hammond’s crash back in September.
I was talking to somebody this morning about whether it was right for the BBC to air footage of the crash or whether it was in bad taste.
As it turns out it was handled very well. To not mention it would have felt very false, to be overly serious certainly not in Top Gear style.
Mr Hammond, we’re very pleased you’re OK … now let’s not mention the crash again.
BBC Breakfast News may not be the most rigorous or intellectual of the Corporation’s news broadcasts, but it often provides oddities worthy of comment.
Take this morning for instance. There was the NASA Big Cheese talking about sending men back to the Moon, and how it’s a little way off yet to talk about colonising the planet.
After all that fuss last year by the clever scientist folk about whether Pluto and a whole bunch of big rocks were planets, the Big Wigs still don’t seem to know what is and what isn’t one.
I thought everybody knew the Moon wasn’t a planet because it is made out of cheese. If it were then every time we went to Sainsbury’s NASA would be trying to land astronauts on the dairy counter.
First we have the dumbed down whizzing-zooming dirty brown weather map, now the Met Office are trying to make the BBC’s forecasts “simpler” to understand.
Apparently most of the country are incapable of understanding terms such as “showery outbreaks” or “chilly in isolated areas”. Our farmers are no longer able to determine that, while hot sunny weather is great news for most of the country, it isn’t good for them if their fields need some water.
A Met Office spokesman said: “This is not an attempt to dumb down the weather”. In that case, why are they doing it? I don’t have a problem understanding what the forecaster is saying. If anything, since they changed the weather graphics, the forecaster is now the only way of understanding what’s going on.
After the excitement of this morning’s subterranean adventures, the mood rather dramatically changed when we got back to the hotel and I switched on the TV. The BBC World feed kept blanking out, but I caught something about a bombing in London.
It took a while for me to realise exactly what was going on, flicking through the numerous foreign language news channels searching for information. Luckily one of them was broadcasting Sky News pictures and I could just about make out their onscreen text behind the other channel’s superimposed graphics. Although I’ve complained about the size of them in the past, I’ll now be forever grateful that their text is big enough to read from behind other onscreen clutter.
After what seemed like an age, BBC World reappeared and I was able to get the full story. I’d been trying to get through to the UK on the phone, but there didn’t seem to be any international phonelines so the BBC output was an immediate comfort. Thank you BBC.
The conference had its final session and closing ceremony in the afternoon, in perhaps a slightly more somber atmosphere than would have otherwise been apparent.
This evening we went for a drive towards the centre of the island to the town of P�rgos. However, with the roads being as steep and twisted as they were, we decided against staying on until after dark. Instead, we came back to Pythag�rio to enjoy some more fantastic Souvlaki at one of the shops on the main street.
I bet they didn’t forecast this. There’s a huge storm brewing against the BBC’s new weather graphics. At least its not just me! It even made the front page of The Times this morning.
The BBC’s own Have Your Say debate on the subject is rather sparse on the praise front, with some real gems including “We may be the land that only got electricity last week, but I can assure you that, in spite what the weather forecast implies, we are not a desert” and “God is allowed to mess around with the weather. The BBC shouldn’t even try!”
It never rains but it pours: 
A Scottish MP has tabled a Motion in the House of Commons, urging the BBC to rethink the 3D effect which means Scotland is barely visible at times.
Clouding the issue, a BBC spokesman responded to the various complaints about this by saying that Scotland is actually in proportion to the rest of the UK, its just that its further away so it seems smaller. Well yes, that would be what everybody’s complaining about.
There’s a sunnier side to it all though, giving plenty of material for the satirists: Deadbrain claims there has been widespread panic across England after a forecast made it look like much of England was under water. The article goes on to suggest “Other viewers are also reported to have suffered sickness after one 3D-flyover went haywire, zooming repeatedly from Cardiff to Southampton before doing a pirouette and heading for the moon.”
While whoever decided the new graphics were a good idea must be hoping all the fuss will soon blow over, they need to get some of their staff onside first. On this evening’s 7 O’Clock News on BBC Three, the presenter seemed less than enthused by the new system. To paraphrase: “Let’s have a look at the new-look weather, and as you can see there’s a lot of it. Tomorrow half of the country will be covered in a blue splodge, while yellow rectangles will hover over some major cities and Cardiff will be 14.”
I’d love to see the duty log - presumably the staff are struggling to deal with the blizzard of complaints.
I think we can expect some major tweaks over the next few days. While its doubtful they’ll go back to the previous graphics, I would expect a few of the old forecast features to reappear in slightly modernised form soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend Metcheck for anybody who wants to know more than temperature and whether its going to rain or not.
Yuck!
Today the Beeb unveiled their new weather graphics. Out of the window are the old two-dimensional maps and famous weather symbols, to be replaced by fully animated 3D fly-throughs and, well, very little information it seems.
Our country may be widely known as a “green and pleasant land”, but according to the new weather maps it is more of a desert - and a muddy brown splodge of a desert at that. 
Maybe they know something we don’t know about the impending heatwave and global warming?
The friendly rain cloud symbol is out with the rest too. Now there’s a dodgy animation of bright blue puddles instead. Cloudy weather is signified by a slight change of colour on the basic map from light brown to dark brown.
Apparently the idea is that’s more accurate than the old symbols which covered areas of up to 200 miles. It just makes it harder to see what the hell’s going on if you ask me.
The 3D effect has the UK at such a strange projection you can barely see Scotland at all on the full UK picture. Oh well, it always rains there anyway. Aside from that, if you live anywhere apart from London and Manchester, you’ll need to revise your Geography to work out where you are on the map. Let’s just say they could do with a few more placenames. On the forecast just now even London wasn’t labelled!?!?!?!
If you’re interested in wind direction and strength or isobars then it seems you’ll have to look elsewhere for your weather from now on (surely most people understand high and low pressure?). First of all they dumb-down the 6 O’Clock News to a level even an inebreated chimpanzee could understand, now the weather has been chav-ified too. Unfortunately, its dumbed down so much it took me ages to work out there wasn’t a fault with the graphics and they really were trying to show me something.
I expect there’ll be a bit of fine tuning over the next few days, but overall its a very disappointing makeover at the moment. Its obvious style is now placed over content. Mind you, the style isn’t that great either. The UK has been turned into a puddle-ridden muddy splodge.