The BBC chose tonight to launch their heralded new interactive service – Ten O’Clock News Extra. So eagerly, I pressed my red button once we reached the weather forecast, and after a few seconds, the menu loaded up. I selected the video option which was due to give me a behind the scenes report at one of John Kerry’s campaign rallies.
A neat screen loaded up with the video on the right, and a smaller BBC One video stream on the left. But no sound. Now it’s got to be said that not getting the sound is nothing unusual in the murky world of Telewest Digital interactive applications. A certain amount of box resetting is usually in order. Then suddenly the BBC News theme burst forth as the tape loop ended and restarted. Again no sound. Strange.
I decided to persevere and pressed the red button on my Freeview box. After a somewhat longer wait (I have an original On Digital box), an identical service loaded, with identical sound issues. I could select BBC One sound without a problem, but the News Extra stream only played sound at the end of the tape loop. So it’s a BBC issue not a box one. Pretty poor really. Surely someone at television centre was checking this service out? Maybe teams of engineers are running around at the moment.
Actually, it’s a strange thing to introduce News Extra. To my mind, it already exists. It’s on BBC2 and it’s called Newsnight. More in-depth reports into issues that have invariably been covered in the BBC One news.
As a news junkie, should I be getting a longer report on News Extra, or switch over to BBC2? Maybe I should put two TVs on and watch both?
Newsnight’s having a good streak at the moment. Last night Jeremy Paxman presented a full and fascinating background report into the election based around San Diego. And they’ve had some great interviewees.
This year will be the first that I’ll get the choice of British coverage compared with US coverage, since I’ll get CNN and also NBC coverage (courtesy CNBC Europe). Should be interesting.