Channel 5, 5 pm news bulletin analysis

Today as a group we watched Channel 5's 5 pm news bulletin to analyse and write a critique of it. I thought the bulletin was very good but differed to that of ITV news or BBC news in many ways. Firstly just with the style of the Channel 5 studio; The presenter is standing up for the entire bulletin and has a laptop in front of her which is not seen in the other bulletins. ITV present their headlines standing up but for the rest of the bulletin, like the BBC, there is a desk which the presenter stands behind. In this bulletin the presenter only has a little pedestal which the Presenter has a laptop on front of. I found this strange and I think it looks better and more conventional to have a desk. Secondly Channel 5 news has a couple of screens behind from which they play VTs and links to OBs which I haven't seen before on ITV  or BBC.

As for the content of the news itself, I felt that there were a lot of softer stories in this bulletin and less of the hard hitting global stories that perhaps the BBC and ITV would cover; there were a lot of celebrity stories and the political story linked to the reality show 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here' with a reporter actually outside parliament regarding Nadine Dorries- I felt that this was a bit strange. There was also an advert break in the middle of the bulletin where I think viewers may at this point switch off; this did however allow for a recap of the top story; the floods.

During the bulletin there were three OB links to relate stories with up to the minute information which I thought was very good, however I don't think that they really added anything to the stories that had already been told by the presenter, they then linked to packages which I feel could have been covered in the OB.

I felt that all of the interviews throughout the stories in this bulletin were framed differently to how we have been taught. The presenters were in shot for every interview and this added nothing is all you could see was the back of their heads. There was also a strange interview with a man trapped in his house which made us all laugh rather than listening to what he actually had to say; it was a very strange interview. A lot of these interviews also seemed to be a bit off with their rule of thirds.

There was music played underneath the presenter talking at the beginning of one VT which also used the same show twice. However there was also a good use of graphics in the story, but the numbers shown weren't summed up and instead were exact figures.

There was one oov in the bulletin and not a news belt and the bulletin finished on an 'and finally' but used vox pops which is never great and the whole feel of the piece was as if it wasnt take seriously so I didn't think this was great to include in the bulletin.

There were also a few presenter slip-ups if I am being overly critical. Overall it was a good bulletin but different to what we are used to with the BBC and ITV in terms of style and content.