November 10, 2005


Broken? No, just cheap ....

A REDUNDANT television news presenter appearing on a comedy show as a TV news presenter mocking television news presenter smacks of desperation - but that's just what former Five news presenter Rob Butler has been doing.

Rob disappeared from the UK's screens when ITN lost the contract for Five News to Sky Television and production moved from Gray's Inn Road to Isleworth at the end of 2004.

Now, 11 months later, he is appearing as quickfire anchor Andrew Farley on Broken News, a fast-moving pastiche of television news.

Broken News appears clever, but it's a joke that is cheap and short-lived.

Around the world, dedicated journalists and technicians are trying to keep rolling news on the air - from studios that are under-resourced, with equipment that is unreliable, shift patterns that make life unbearable and with professional pride that keeps such services on the air in spite of, rather than because of, their managers.

Indeed, Broken News probably has a bigger budget for one 27-minute programme than Look East, a regional news magazine which it mocks as Look Out East.

Yes, comedy can be cruel, but there is a difference between the sharp edge of satire pricking over-inflated egos of the publicity-seeking and the powerful and those who are trying to do good work in the face of corporate adversity.

Easy writing
Writing comedy 'scrolls' - the captions that move across the bottom of the screen - is far easier for skilled writers than writing real news is for young journalists, recently out of college but still probably inadequately trained.

Similarly, business news channel producers have had to battle with technology and imagination to create screen formats which provide useful data while shielding viewers from the visual consistency of talking heads.

Director John Morton said, before the first episode was broadcast, that 'we're not having a go at existing news channels or presenters'. Broken News doesn't look like that.

'I hope,' he told one journalist, 'it makes people see the news slightly differently.'

That Broken News may do, but the effect is more likely to undermine the credibility of broadcast news channels and the journalists fighting to keep them on the air than boost it.

Tucked away as a fun segment of Children in Need or Comic Relief, Broken News might have been forgiveable; as a series, it's just over-stretched and cheap.