NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS

Is it only me, who is irritated by the trend in which television newsreaders tell you what they are going to read about in the news, instead of just reading it?

When I lived in New York in 1980-81, I used to get intensely irritated by having films interrupted for advert breaks (something which, until that point, never happened in the U.K.). Particularly when such interruptions were of the "five die in fire in the Bronx, more at 10" kind. I reluctantly accepted that American TV trends often crept their way into European programmes x years later; and that has duly happened. Many TV news stations nowadays have dual anchors, where the interplay between the two is supposed to add spice. There is now also that intensely irritating banter between the anchors and the reporter out at the scene, where they do this "over to you, Brian", "back to you, Ted", "thanks Brian" routine. But although Denmark's state-owned but commercial TV2 succumbed to all that sort of thing long ago, DR1 seemed mercifully old-fashioned, with a single anchor talking to the camera, and relatively few Brian and Ted phrases.

Until now. DR1 have a daily programme called the "Evening Show", from 6.00-6.30pm and 7.00-7.30pm, the two halves sandwiching the early evening news from 6.30-7.00pm. At 6.28pm or thereabouts, the co-anchors on the Evening Show cut to the newsdesk in order to ask the newsreader what is going to be on the news that evening. This drives me nuts, not least because two minutes later, after returning to the Evening Show for a wrap-up, the news starts in traditional fashion, with headlines. The effect is that we get news about news, then headlines, and only then the news itself.

Call me an old fogey, but what was wrong with the old system?

Walter Blotscher