five dumps ITN

I hear that Sky have hired a hot young designer from Florida to mastermind the Five News relaunch

That joke is *so* over now. Don't you read Metropol?

That would be my friend Baron Grass (yoursohotandtalented@skynews.co.uk), who was working for ITN last week and the BBC 2 weeks before that (he's that in demand).

He's promised that Martin Anderson can have a play around with the graphics and that we will all be allowed a final vote on the new theme tune, which is likely to have fewer violins and more thumping bass beats.

Is that place still going?
And what's the relevance to the first quoted comment anyway?

The "Baron Grass" saga is effectively at an end now that he has become a regular poster on Metropol. As such, further references to his earlier duplicitous activites seem a little redundant.

Not that I'm one to tread on a gag, but if this horse gets flogged much more we'll be left with a pot of glue.

Thanks, chuck. I had no idea. Sounds like I may even have to revisit Metropol - unless you'd be kind enough to PM who it is (assuming it's someone I might know in another guise)

Jaron Brass is Jaron Brass. He just doesn't work for the BBC, or Sky News, etc.

Try http://blog.dietsoda.net/archives/000020.php to catch up with the saga.

Still unsure why - ooooh this new posting form is fancy.

Still unsure why people believe that tripe he posted and his whole dad getting arrested thing but nonetheless Jarongate #2 did occur and what a fab thread it was.

Ok I haven't watched five news for ages and have always had an attitude to it that it's not very good, but I think today they demonstrated that they actually are doing a hell of a fantastic job with only 60 people - James Bays in Madrid, Jon Gilbert in the Leicester footballers place Live, Colin Campbell live at the Bischard inquiry, dedicated consumer and sports correspondents - if they got a Washington Correspondent and new music then they're actually a great team producing a great programme and my mind has changed - I think five are ''wrong'' to change the contract over.

Does anyone else think that the end piece of the opening titles sound like a plane landing.

Well I drop in and out of five news and the numerous studio changes and music changes have annoyed me quite a bit! The orignal c5 news was great and very distinctive and did try a few new ideas that no-one else were doing. (which have now been adopted/adapted by others)

five's reporting team is still strong and produce something like 3 hours of news a day. I just feel the image of five news and five in general has gone down rather than up and this is possibly due to the large number of rebrands of the news and the channel itself. People cant relate to it anymore! The brand was strong when people were originally turning over for the films at 9pm and you mightve caught 2 short news summaries throughout the duration of the film - subconsciously people were getting use to the style and pace of the news.

Whereas now the current music is tacky and the studio looks cheap. I still cant actually see what Sky can actually do to five news to make it better!

The process is that five put the news out to contract and tenders are submitted. The cheapest option is not always the best but if Sky have intentionally put a low bid in to make sure of winning the contract it is surely underhand and not really beneficial to the viewer because all Sky are thinking of (Murdoch) is getting his brand onto terrestrial tv channels.

Of course Sky will provide a great service for five but people dont realise how good the news content already is on five news with the current finances.

If Sky want to supply the news on a loss-making basis that is upto them but in the long term when Sky have got what they want surely prices must go up or quality down when they dont need this lossmaking project?

One of the big diffrences between the ITN and Sky contracts is that now if five (or Channel 4) want to use a piece of footage from elsewhere in ITN (such as ITV news) they have to pay for it. WIth Sky everyything, including the reporters will be aviaiable to them