Post by Teddy Bear on Nov 6, 2008 21:33:48 GMT
Though I didn't watch it personally, this writer in The Telegraph who did watch the election coverage courtesy of the Beeb was less than enamoured by the quality. Bear in mind the BBC sent 175 staff to cover it, over four times more than Sky.
US election on television: BBC TV's election coverage teeters on the brink of farce
By Andrew Pettie
If there had been a swingometer to gauge the quality of BBC1’s coverage of the US Election it would have spent Tuesday night oscillating between “stilted” and “stultifying”. More than a million viewers tuned in expecting to see history being made and a slickly marshalled panel of pundits telling them what to make of it.
Instead they were greeted by dear old David Dimbleby, his spectacles perched precariously close to the end of his nose, who didn’t so much resemble a BBC elder statesman as a bumbling headmaster late for morning assembly.
Dimbleby, by turns flushed, fumbling and forgetful, seemed to have only the slenderest grip on what was going on. His biggest gaffe came after a clip of Senator John McCain addressing journalists on his campaign jet. “Who’s that man to McCain’s left?” asked Dimbleby. “Senator Joe Lieberman,” chimed in a pundit, successfully identifying one of the most prominent politicians in America.
This slip-up betrayed a worrying lack of homework. Thankfully, Dimbleby was helped out by the BBC’s two outstanding performers on the night: North America Editor Justin Webb, whose contributions were considered and pertinent, and Dimbleby’s right-hand man, Washington Correspondent Matt Frei.
Furthermore, you could argue that Dimbleby’s job isn’t to be an expert, but to extract expertise from others. Here too, though, he got in the way. At one point a young American pollster was saying something fresh and insightful. It was hard to predict what impact younger voters would have on the result, she argued, because all US polls are conducted via landlines, whereas a significant percentage of young voters only use mobile phones.
But just as this useful information was being communicated, Dimbleby butted in to direct our attention to Chicago and the BBC’s windy World Affairs Editor, John Simpson. True to form, Simpson was keen to interpret the day’s momentous events in relation to John Simpson. This was, as he repeatedly reminded viewers, his 12th presidential campaign. Sadly, Simpson wasn’t elected President. But after this grandstanding display a promotion to BBC Galactic Affairs Editor is surely his.
Back in the Washington studio, Dimbleby was being frustrated by a disconcerting lack of results. At regular intervals he was interrupted by a blast of portentous music, a flashy graphic and a clock counting down to the moment when the next batch of results was due to be called by the US news networks.
However, the networks, anxious to count the votes and not their chickens, weren’t rushing to call any of the pivotal states. So the BBC’s here-comes-the-exciting-bit drum-roll was invariably followed by a deafening silence and Dimbleby goldfishing to camera. If only the graphics team had thought to create some CGI tumbleweed.
It is traditional in these fallow moments to turn to the sworn enemy of the election night lull, Peter Snow. But Snow, sadly, has hung up his swingometer and was no doubt watching at home while trying to improvise a 3D bar-chart from his sofa cushions. In Snow’s abscence, Jeremy Vine was at the helm of a dizzyingly complicated touchscreen map, which he angrily prodded like a supermarket checkout attendant battling a faulty till.
Few of the BBC’s pundits fared much better. Ted Koppel, ex-anchor of ABC’s Nightline and one of the most august figures in American journalism, barely got a look-in, while Republican-bashing columnist Christopher Hitchens was allowed to huff and puff to his heart’s content. The lowest moment came from New York, where reporter Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Ricky Gervais. Her final question – “Who would David Brent vote for?” – was enough to make Gervais squirm in embarrassment.
But as BBC1’s coverage teetered on the brink of comedy – with Dimbleby trying not to panic in the Captain Mainwaring role – ITV1’s election coverage, fronted by Alastair Stewart, was relying on an actual comedian, the impressionist Jon Culshaw, as one of its key pundits. In the final analysis, however, elections are about winners and losers. The BBC, with 1.3million viewers to ITV1’s 300,000, won by a landslide. And Matt Frei should be applauded for trying to inject some informed opinion on the rare occasions that Christopher Hitchens drew breath.
But most of BBC1’s coverage was surprisingly slipshod, and it did a disservice to the enthralling events it was attempting to describe. How disappointing that on the night when Barack Obama held the world’s attention with his thrilling rhetoric, the BBC should fluff its lines.
By Andrew Pettie
If there had been a swingometer to gauge the quality of BBC1’s coverage of the US Election it would have spent Tuesday night oscillating between “stilted” and “stultifying”. More than a million viewers tuned in expecting to see history being made and a slickly marshalled panel of pundits telling them what to make of it.
Instead they were greeted by dear old David Dimbleby, his spectacles perched precariously close to the end of his nose, who didn’t so much resemble a BBC elder statesman as a bumbling headmaster late for morning assembly.
Dimbleby, by turns flushed, fumbling and forgetful, seemed to have only the slenderest grip on what was going on. His biggest gaffe came after a clip of Senator John McCain addressing journalists on his campaign jet. “Who’s that man to McCain’s left?” asked Dimbleby. “Senator Joe Lieberman,” chimed in a pundit, successfully identifying one of the most prominent politicians in America.
This slip-up betrayed a worrying lack of homework. Thankfully, Dimbleby was helped out by the BBC’s two outstanding performers on the night: North America Editor Justin Webb, whose contributions were considered and pertinent, and Dimbleby’s right-hand man, Washington Correspondent Matt Frei.
Furthermore, you could argue that Dimbleby’s job isn’t to be an expert, but to extract expertise from others. Here too, though, he got in the way. At one point a young American pollster was saying something fresh and insightful. It was hard to predict what impact younger voters would have on the result, she argued, because all US polls are conducted via landlines, whereas a significant percentage of young voters only use mobile phones.
But just as this useful information was being communicated, Dimbleby butted in to direct our attention to Chicago and the BBC’s windy World Affairs Editor, John Simpson. True to form, Simpson was keen to interpret the day’s momentous events in relation to John Simpson. This was, as he repeatedly reminded viewers, his 12th presidential campaign. Sadly, Simpson wasn’t elected President. But after this grandstanding display a promotion to BBC Galactic Affairs Editor is surely his.
Back in the Washington studio, Dimbleby was being frustrated by a disconcerting lack of results. At regular intervals he was interrupted by a blast of portentous music, a flashy graphic and a clock counting down to the moment when the next batch of results was due to be called by the US news networks.
However, the networks, anxious to count the votes and not their chickens, weren’t rushing to call any of the pivotal states. So the BBC’s here-comes-the-exciting-bit drum-roll was invariably followed by a deafening silence and Dimbleby goldfishing to camera. If only the graphics team had thought to create some CGI tumbleweed.
It is traditional in these fallow moments to turn to the sworn enemy of the election night lull, Peter Snow. But Snow, sadly, has hung up his swingometer and was no doubt watching at home while trying to improvise a 3D bar-chart from his sofa cushions. In Snow’s abscence, Jeremy Vine was at the helm of a dizzyingly complicated touchscreen map, which he angrily prodded like a supermarket checkout attendant battling a faulty till.
Few of the BBC’s pundits fared much better. Ted Koppel, ex-anchor of ABC’s Nightline and one of the most august figures in American journalism, barely got a look-in, while Republican-bashing columnist Christopher Hitchens was allowed to huff and puff to his heart’s content. The lowest moment came from New York, where reporter Laura Kuenssberg interviewed Ricky Gervais. Her final question – “Who would David Brent vote for?” – was enough to make Gervais squirm in embarrassment.
But as BBC1’s coverage teetered on the brink of comedy – with Dimbleby trying not to panic in the Captain Mainwaring role – ITV1’s election coverage, fronted by Alastair Stewart, was relying on an actual comedian, the impressionist Jon Culshaw, as one of its key pundits. In the final analysis, however, elections are about winners and losers. The BBC, with 1.3million viewers to ITV1’s 300,000, won by a landslide. And Matt Frei should be applauded for trying to inject some informed opinion on the rare occasions that Christopher Hitchens drew breath.
But most of BBC1’s coverage was surprisingly slipshod, and it did a disservice to the enthralling events it was attempting to describe. How disappointing that on the night when Barack Obama held the world’s attention with his thrilling rhetoric, the BBC should fluff its lines.