Sky's fixation with breaking news reached a new low on the evening of 31st December when at the stroke of midnight the yellow banner told us "London Celebrates 2009". Now call me "picky" but that isn't quite breaking news. Breaking News in this instance would have been "No one celebrates New Year. People finally realise New Years Eve is a complete bucket of fuck".
Of course the point is if Sky deem one day ending and another commencing as "news" then they should run Breaking News "New Day Starts" every night at midnight.
Watching the coverage of the Obama parade last week we were treated to the unedifying sight of BBC reporters killing time until the parade started. One reporter was asked "can you speculate on what you expect to see?" Unfortunately the answer wasn't "A frigging parade, you moron". No we got something about "crowds" "car" "president" "bands". Of course we now take this type of crap in our stride. The inanity of it just bypasses us. It doesn't register when reporters are asked to speculate on what either going to be in front of them shortly, or worse is in front of them now. Nor does it seem unusual for two reporters to speculate together, usually the one in the studio acquiesces to the one at the scene. Of course the simple fact there is a reporter at the scene makes them an expert, regardless of the fact that they've only just arrived or can't tell us anything that someone with eyes in their head couldn't work out from the pictures. But the reporter at the scene is able to tell us what's going on. They may have only have just arrived but in the 10 minutes since they got there they've managed to get the pulse of the community and feel so ingratiated within it that they can speak on it's behalf. "The community has been deeply impacted by this" as they report the latest back street tragedy. How the frig do they know? They can't. But they say it anyway. Because that's what they'd like to think the "community" they are in would think that way. They become experts in an instant. Much like the named columnists who suddenly become experts on things they know nothing about. By the end of this week, columnists will be pontificating about something that today they are completely ignorant of.
Another news bugbear is how people are captioned on TV programmes. Not "famous" people but rather those who happened to be in the vicinity. There is no programme worse at this than BBC Breakfast. In recent weeks we had some girl, sharing Bill and Sian's cosy little sofa*, whose name was captioned with the word "teenager" beneath it. For those, presumably, who don't know what a teenager is, or what one looks like. Cheers for that, The next time I see a girl with a plummy accent and spots I'll know what the name for such a creature is. It's "a teenager".
*You know BBC Breakfast really gets on my tits. It's a fucking awful, awful programme. Bill (it has to be "Bill" not Bill Turnbull) and Sian (ditto) sit on that frigging sofa radiating patronising smugness that if harnessed could probably curl the toes of most of the Western world. It's not news, it's info-tainment. When it's serious "Bill" furrows his brow. For twenty seconds. Then it's back to plugging some BBC talent show, tutting about Marks and Spencer latest sales figures, looking earnest when the house trained doctor appears, a wee bit of joshing with the sports presenter, then it's over to Carol for the weather (which come rain, hail or sun she delivers in tone of someone pleasuring themselves with a Black and Decker drill on the hammer setting). This programme is so utterly fucking worthless it makes GMTV look authoritative. I'll bet that's a sentence that's not been written too many times in the past. It takes a special skill, an ability that should somehow be rewarded, to make a programme that is actually worse than a predecessor that featured Russell Grant. So well done all concerned.
