Analysis of the structure, branding, graphics and presentation methods of an entire news programme

Analysis of the structure, branding, graphics and presentation methods of an entire news programme: ITV NEWS

Structure:

• The intro starts with the main anchor stating the main headlines of the night.
• Plays small clips from the packages teasing the audience  of what's to come in the show
• The title sequence plays.
• The main anchor is introduced.
• 1st story is introduced by the anchor about our then Prime Minister Teresa May trying to change the image of the conservative party.
• 1st Package plays relating to the story.
• We then go back to the main anchor who is now live with the reporter who narrated over the 1st package who is now outside Downing Street to give us a more updated story.
• We then go back to the anchor where he says that swing voters are not really happy with the re-shuffle. They get two opinions on the situation by getting a younger and older opinion.
• 2nd package plays.
• We go back to the anchor where he begins another story regarding the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the 'Me Too' movement, where more female stars in Hollywood are trying to make a stand.
• 2nd package plays about female protests at the golden globes.
• We then go back to the main anchor who is now live with the Washington correspondent where he discusses whether Oprah would be a good candidate for President.
• Back to the anchor where he starts a new story about equal pay from BBC China.
• 3rd package begins.
• Then back to the main anchor where he then moves onto the 4th story of the programme 
• 4th package plays.
• The back to the Anchor where he says that some patients are sleeping on the floor as the NHS are running out of room.
• The main anchor then changes the story to see how post-Christmas has effected retail shops.
• 5th package plays.
• We then go back to the anchor as he delivers the final the penultimate story, as it was a big night for English football as they introduce VAR for the first time.
• 6th package plays.
• Finally, we go back to the final saying as he shows images of little princess Charlotte as she attends nursery.
• The main anchor signs off
• Outro music plays
• credits roll
• the 'ITV' logo appears at the end of the programme.

The programmes overall running time was 30 minutes long, this gave the show enough time to go quite into detail with the stories they were trying to tell us. On the other hand, our total running time will be around 5/6 minutes long. This is considerably a lot shorter than ITV, but we are only focusing on one story so the time shouldn't be a problem. Another important aspect to take away from the structure is the order in which everything appears. I noticed that the package would always play before the live segment, the reason behind this is because if there are any updates to the story we went to a reporter live as he gave us more updated information.

Branding:

• ITV News at Ten logos in bottom corner when intro begins.
• Shows name always comes up when a new package plays. This also happens when someone's name comes onto the screen.
• So when it cuts to go to live in the bottom of the screen we see a still from the title sequence.
• The ITV logo is shown at the end of the show.

Throughout the show, they don't tend to show there branding other than occasionally showing the 'ITV' logo when they go live or when a package starts. Having their logo only appear in certain situations was a very good idea as doesn't distract the audience from the story. The episode does have the logos at the beginning and the end, doing this meant that the audience would hopefully follow up on the stories by knowing where to find the story. I think that because we are a new news show we should try and promote our name as much as possible in the first few episodes so GZTV would be cemented into the minds of our audience that we're a reliable news source. One thing I did notice is that they never put any social media handles promoting their show, meaning that the audience wouldn't have any clue where to look. This is something we will do differently than ITV because they're such a well-known company they don't really need to promote their social media because we're new to the scene we want people to know where to find us so it is really important that we add our social media handle.

Graphics:

• The title sequence of the world showing different locations and it starts to focus on the UK.
• Screenshot of the conservatives twitter.
• Image of Theresa May and next to her are other people involved with the conservatives.
• Screenshot of the leader of the Scottish leader of the conservatives.
• 2 similar images that show Theresa May and another that shows the public services both of these pictures had a blue tint to it to represent the conservative party.
• An image of Jeremy Corbyn but with a red tint to represent Labour.
• In the gallery with a computer showing images whilst the reporter is talking. 
• two images of the Muslim couple planning on making a bomb together.
• Mothercare logo with some animated children toys around it.
• online stats that Mothercare produced.
• graphics showing the new rules regarding around the new video assistant referee (VAR).

This specific news programme didn't really use a lot of graphics throughout the show and I also noticed that there was only a few graphics that actually helped give more information to the story. For example the VAR segment and the BBC China Presenter. The other graphics used never really gave more information to the story. For our news piece, we'd definitely consider adding a few graphics, but I personally don't want to go overboard with them as sometimes they can take away from the emotion. 

Presentation Methods:

• They have a formal approach.

• When starting a new story they'd look away from the camera.

• Both anchor and reporters look directly into the camera so it looks like they're having a normal conversation.

The presentation methods used during the show were very clear, the ones I really noticed was the formal approach that the anchor had. Having this formal approach made it very easy to understand as he was not using slang that the older audience wouldn't have known. Looking directly into the camera was another really good techniques as I felt like the anchor was informing me personally, which made it more compelling for me to watch. Learning from the main presenter meant that we now understand how to present our production, we want to be as professional as possible by using the techniques of looking directly into the camera and formal English we can easily achieve this. Therefore meaning that we would have that connection to the audience by eye contact and we wouldn't lose the audience as they would be able to understand fully what we are saying.

Conclusion:

To summerise everything I've taken away from this episode of ITV News at Ten, it's that we need to make it clear what the story is we are trying to tell. To do this we need to address our viewer by having a formal tone and by looking into the camera. We also need to consider how our graphic will help our narrative move forward, if the graphics are pointless then we'd distract the viewers from what's being said.




Harvard reference:

ITV News at ten, (2005) [television programme online] ITV At: https://estream.ucreative.ac.uk/View.aspx?id=27851~5k~cBWyC8GWUm&msauth=1 (Accessed on 30 October 2019