Television
The news is the news but Channel 4 News and BBC2's Newsnight are also programmes, topped, tailed rounded: the nearest things to the old daily magazines such as Tonight and Midweek. They have both been re-upholstered for the new year.
The opening of Channel 4 News now hurtles us into an electronic maze reminiscent of Tron. In the studio itself, however, all is calm and monolithic with slab-like coffee tables stretching into infinity and a single laptop computer permanently frozen on a directory page - as if Archie Norman has been hired and declared a clean desk policy. A pair of Siamese sofas is available for less formal discussions, although they look about as comfortable as an interview with Peter Mandelson.
This is not a newsroom but a warehouse art gallery with a video wall as its central exhibit. On day one I wondered how Jon Snow, who travels to interviews by bike, would cope in his new habitat, especially now he has to introduce the programme standing up and must therefore remember to remove his bicycle clips. The problem with a standing start is that it turns the news headlines into an opening monologue, which in turn forces a performance out of the newscaster - and once you start performing the news, it is but a short pratfall from being Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Snow duly pretended to consult the script in his hands to get the exact words for Charlie Whelan's promise to resign, and then turned round to face the screen for Elinor Goodman's report. By the end of the first week he had, I noted to my pleasure, dropped the am dram, and had to contend with only the Medusa stare of the obligatory Kirsty (in this case Lang, as opposed to Newsnight's Wark and Channel 5's Young), who sits across the studio facing Snow, his un-applauding audience of one.
By the end of the first week, which included a new Saturday outing, Channel 4 News had settled into its new skin. It has been perked up by two recruits from ITN's Channel 5 News, Sarah Smith as Scottish correspondent (introducing us to the Labour sport of "Nat-bashing") and Mark Easton as home affairs editor. ("The problem," he said of the NHS crisis, "is not too many germs; it is not enough nurses.") And I like David Smith in Washington, currently the gloomiest man on television. Snow has many faults as an anchor - he stumbles when he reads and gets into twists when asking questions - but he has one great virtue, his likeability, and it is already seeping into and humanising the new set. The happy problem facing his editor, Jim Gray, is of abundance: what to do when his people come up with an exclusive, as they did last Tuesday with a commendable investigation into genetic engineering in the dairy industry. Its 15-minute length did not convince me this was a lead item.
Newsnight, meanwhile, steams up-river into territory satirised by Chris Morris on Brass Eye. Jeremy Paxman or Kirsty Wark are now obliged to walk into a murky and windowless new set to the beat of the programme theme and then shout over it to announce the delights ahead in a The-Gang's-All-Here manner. On the first Monday of the new look, the tune was re-introduced with a graphic to let us know we were hearing news headlines while other captions indicated "in-briefs" and something called "Tomorrow" (the future-news that included the sensation that the Queen's Christmas tree decorations were to be sold at auction). This sequence is now the scrappiest news bulletin outside L!ve TV and will have to be rethought if it is to become, as the BBC Time Lords have decreed, an 11pm lodestar. The show ends with a credit sequence ("set lighting and design by Imagination") of a length to rival a costume drama's.
A news programme is in trouble when even newspaper gossip columnists notice it is "increasingly absurd", as the Mail's did last week, ridiculing Paxman for wearing a kilt for a report from Edinburgh. By day five, although most of the Chris Morris flourishes had been ditched, Newsnight was still struggling. The team absented themselves to the inside of the Millennium Dome, where Lang hosted a nebulous discussion on good and evil in the next 1,000 years. We waited half an hour before returning to the studio where Martha Kearney actually had some news for us.
It is all so unnecessary. In Paxman Newsnight has first call on the only truly compulsive current affairs presenter of his generation. It has TV's most creative political editor in Mark Mardell, excellent roving correspondents such as Robin Denselow, who last week produced a moving report on child prostitution in Cambodia, and spirited stand-in presenters, such as Kearney, whose authority, on the days they front the show, would be helped if, on other nights, they were allowed on set to read the headlines. But there is no sense of community, either between staff or audience.
After a year in the job, Newsnight's editor Sian Kevill betrays no flair for shaping the news into a programme or making the programme look like news. As for Imagination and its retard's jigsaw of a set, she should ask for her money back.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the London "Evening Standard"
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
