Sky News coverage of todays rail crash

billy the squid

Alright I can understand sky news giving wall to wall coverage of a potential disaster occouring with todays rail crash in britain.

The story broke around 6:30 and sky dropped everything to give it non stop coverage. fair enough

By 11:30 the authorities had given all the relavent information, the number of fatalities, how long it took the emergency services to get there, which hospitals the injured went to and what condition they were in.

But did sky resume even some sort of desemination of the other stories, no, they played the same press conference, eye witness reports etc over and over and over again.

I dont see a problem with sky covering a breaking story, but I think that they spent too much time regurgitating the same material with this one, when it was obvious that there was going to be no more developments at least until daylight comes tomorrow. All the passengers were off the train by 1130 so it wasn't a case of staying with the story because there were still people trapped in the train or anything.

Does anyone else have views on how long sky were giving this story wall to wall coverage.

dangerman

I'm guessing their thinking is this, across the uk etc. peeps are hearing about a railway accident, if they have wall-to-wall coverage, then they are likely to capture those new viewers for the 'cycle' as in the time it takes for their whole sequence of reports to loop back on themselves. If they don't, then the viewer will switch to bbc 24/flick around till they find it.

I'm totally talking out of my arse, don't know at all, just guessing tbh.

What really gets me about it though, is the way when there hasn't been any new news for hours, and they still ask 'so what's the reaction from locals there?'

Is the reaction *ever* anything other than shock, upset etc?. They could almost have a pre-recorded version and then just blue screen in the appropriate disaster background.

flogen

I'm pretty sure that Sky News is engineered for the so-called "MTV generation", you know the elusive group of people who need constant flashey things and new camera angles in order to stay interested? The channel is there for people to dip in and out of, which is fair enough if there's a market but it does mean that incidents like this, while important, become the only news of the day.
I really don't like news broadcasts that try to appeal to the LCD, I want news that gives me all the facts of the day, ones I'm looking for and others that I didn't know about until then. It's like TV3 and their fluff pieces, going for that "awww" factor, save it for The Sun please.

I also don't understand why Sky News, a channel so proud of its interactive services would dedicate all the broadcast time to one story... many people now have the ability to press the red button and watch any news on the story for themselves. Again, its a pretty big story, but there are others to be covered too.

Murdoch himself described Sky News as "BBC-Lite", I'd go so far as to say they were ITV-Lite.

flogen

Flukey

Sky News always do the blanket coverage thing, a lot of which is not even news. They were lucky Princess Diana died when she did, because there was no other news for a week. But for her they'd have had to have gone off air for all that time.:rolleyes:

mig29ie

This is the normal Sky News - Sky News UK.

Well, put it this way, if the Dublin-Cork Inter-City Derailed, wouldn't RTE have continuous coverage?

Put things in perspective. BBC had a camera out there 2 to 3 hours AFTER Sky and ITV kept cutting to adds when they eventually had a reporter out there.

The Sky News anchor that evening, Allan King stayed on for extended coverage.

It was a tragedy but in terms of the media battle for the story, Sky News aced everyone, if you can't accept that, well I don't know, you must be anti- Sky or biased.

flogen

mig29ie wrote:

This is the normal Sky News - Sky News UK.

Well, put it this way, if the Dublin-Cork Inter-City Derailed, wouldn't RTE have continuous coverage?

Put things in perspective. BBC had a camera out there 2 to 3 hours AFTER Sky and ITV kept cutting to adds when they eventually had a reporter out there.

The Sky News anchor that evening, Allan King stayed on for extended coverage.

It was a tragedy but in terms of the media battle for the story, Sky News aced everyone, if you can't accept that, well I don't know, you must be anti- Sky or biased.

You're wrong, Shurlock, Radio 1 wouldn't even give it blanket coverage, they'd give the facts and whatever they had in the way of sound bites, then they'd move onto the other news of the day and come back when they had updates etc. The TV channel would be the same, RTE don't treat their viewers like goldfish.
And the point of this thread has nothing to do with who got their first, saying that, while I dont know who did get their first I really doubt that BBC took 2 or 3 hours to cover the story or get to the scene, they have so many regional offices and channels they're far more imbedded in the UK than Sky or ITN. The point being made is how stupid it is to give blanket coverage to a story when all theyre doing is repeating the 2 minutes of information they have. It's not just this event either, they even did it for Brando's death. Sure that was new, big news to me because I'm a fan, but all they had was a short interview with a film critic, with clips of his best known films playing over it, and the news bar saying "Marlon Brando has died" or something to that effect. They went with that for at least 2 hours, only giving a run-down of the news at the ad breaks, with "brando dead" and "industry mourns death of brando" as the two top headlines. That's not what I look for in a news service.

flogen

mig29ie

You're going off topic there Flogan. Lets stick to the train disaster. Sky is a 24/7 news network. It was a saturday night and for those hours they stayed with the top story.

Sky have a nice helicopter to get them out there real fast, it took the BBC 2 hours after Sky before they brought pictures and after thyem came ITN who kept cutting to adds.

I think that if a serious incident like a packed Iarnród Éireann train to Cork derailed, RTE would go to the story and if they wouldn't, I'm sure Sky would. Sky also have the luxury that they are a 24/7 news netowrk a.k.a. they give you the news 24/7 - RTE don't have that luxury but I still think they'd cut into the regular bulletin. I'm sure NewsTalk106 would go to the story.

Now, you, I persume that you are a student possibly studying journalism or want to get into that field? You're young and possibly come from a Working Class backround? You see this might explain things, I think a lot of Sky's viewers are in the middle class. And if you do want to be a good journalist then maybe you should practice not being biased in here first. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you didn't watch the news that night, did you?

mig29ie

Ohh and remember our debate on the coverage of the beslan seige? Well I got the results in today to prove you wrong AGAIN!!! :

Sky News leads British coverage of Russian school siege
Issued: September 7, 2004
Millions tuned into Sky News as chaos, gunfire and panic marked the end of the Russian school siege.


On Friday, 3 September, the day the siege ended, Sky News’ daily reach was 3,231,000. BBC News 24 and ITV News reach was 2,550,000 and 1,195,000 respectively.
Between 12 noon and 1pm, as Russian soldiers entered the gym where the hostages were being held and Sky News Correspondent Rachel Amatt broadcast dramatic reports from inside the school grounds, Sky News attracted an audience of 219,000, BBC News 24 100,000 and ITV News Channel 14,000.
Between 12.45pm and 12.59pm, while Rachel Amatt, broadcast live from beside the gym, Sky News had a peak audience of 240,000. BBC News 24 111,000 and ITV News Channel 14,000.
A further peak was reached later in the evening (4.45pm-4.59pm) with an audience of 242,000 for Sky News, BBC News 24 223,000 and ITV News Channel 16,000.
In comparison, BBC News 24 achieved a peak audience of 231,000 (5.15pm-5.29pm) and ITV News peaked at 9.30pm – 9.44pm at 89,000.
Overall figures show that Sky News’ share of viewing in all multichannel homes was 2.24% - peaking at 6.72% between noon and 1pm. BBC News 24’s share was 1.54% and ITV News’ 0.5%

flogen

mig29ie wrote:

Ohh and remember our debate on the coverage of the beslan seige? Well I got the results in today to prove you wrong AGAIN!!! :

Sky News leads British coverage of Russian school siege
Issued: September 7, 2004
Millions tuned into Sky News as chaos, gunfire and panic marked the end of the Russian school siege.


On Friday, 3 September, the day the siege ended, Sky News’ daily reach was 3,231,000. BBC News 24 and ITV News reach was 2,550,000 and 1,195,000 respectively.
Between 12 noon and 1pm, as Russian soldiers entered the gym where the hostages were being held and Sky News Correspondent Rachel Amatt broadcast dramatic reports from inside the school grounds, Sky News attracted an audience of 219,000, BBC News 24 100,000 and ITV News Channel 14,000.
Between 12.45pm and 12.59pm, while Rachel Amatt, broadcast live from beside the gym, Sky News had a peak audience of 240,000. BBC News 24 111,000 and ITV News Channel 14,000.
A further peak was reached later in the evening (4.45pm-4.59pm) with an audience of 242,000 for Sky News, BBC News 24 223,000 and ITV News Channel 16,000.
In comparison, BBC News 24 achieved a peak audience of 231,000 (5.15pm-5.29pm) and ITV News peaked at 9.30pm – 9.44pm at 89,000.
Overall figures show that Sky News’ share of viewing in all multichannel homes was 2.24% - peaking at 6.72% between noon and 1pm. BBC News 24’s share was 1.54% and ITV News’ 0.5%

They're some pretty numbers alright, but I was distracted by your complete stupidity, in that you just got yourself banned for the next... whenever, don't bring your Sky News loving shíte around here again Mr Byrne, you're nothing but a spammer with nothing but ignorance behind your "points"

flogen

A Dub in Glasgo

I have no problem with coverage of the train/road crash but for Sky not to put this crash into some sort of perspective is shoddy and sensationalist IMO. This crash was caused by a car driver and there are hundreds of car crashes that happen every week. The cumlative death toll totally dwarfs rail crashes.

flogen

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

I have no problem with coverage of the train/road crash but for Sky not to put this crash into some sort of perspective is shoddy and sensationalist IMO. This crash was caused by a car driver and there are hundreds of car crashes that happen every week. The cumlative death toll totally dwarfs rail crashes.

good point, but in reality (and it seems like a very dark reality) car crashes happen every day and so people dont want to hear about them, when something out of the ordinary happens in relation to a car crash, that makes it big news. I'm not trying to justify these media tactics, but everyone does it, not just Sky. I have more of a problem with their decision to drop everything in order to repeat a story again and again even though nothing new comes about, that to me is sensationalism. I do see your point in so far as this is sensationalised as they make such a huge deal out of something that in reality bears the same effect as something that happens day in and day out. Naturally the crash was a top story, but it wasn't the story.

flogen