WINOL Bulletin feedback - 14/10/10

Today we watched a WINOL bulletin and were asked to write a small post on the blog giving feedback of our opinions of the positive and negative aspects of the bulletin. I will start by highlighting some of the things which I thought worked well as part of the bulletin and will then go on to comments on aspects which I feel could be improved.

Things which worked well:

• Before the news bulletin started in full, the main stories were briefly explained in a sentence or two. I think that this worked well because it prepared the audience for what is coming up. It also allows someone who perhaps doesn't have time to watch the whole thing to still be able to briefly hear the news. Also this is useful if someone perhaps can hear what the main stories are before they watch in case they find that they are not going to be interested in any of it and so will not waste their time watching! 
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• Another thing which I thought worked well were the visuals that went with some of the stories. For example a nightclub was shown when there was a story about identification issues. This worked well because it was directly relevant to the topic that was being discussed, and so kept the attention of the audience without making them think about something else.
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• I thought it was useful to have a voice over reading the quote at the same time that it was shown on screen. This was a good idea because perhaps there might have been some members of the audience who could not see the quote clearly, or were not able to read it very well, or maybe they might simply have the news on in the background whilst doing something else and would not have been able to look at the quote. So having the help of someone read it to them would have been useful.
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• I also thought it was a good idea to have the motion background behind another quote during the bulletin as this looked very professional.
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• When there was commentary about different sporting events I thought the visuals were well chosen as they often showed the moments which were being discussed as well as general footage from the events. Again this was a good idea because it allows the audience to have something to look at whilst still holding their focus on what the news story is.
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• I thought that the presenters were excellent and added to the professional feel of the bulletin.

Things which could be improved:

• One of the things that I though could be changed was the clip of people playing pool when the commentary was about tuition fees. Whilst it is understandable that it was a student who had been playing pool who was then interviewed I do not feel that the images of pool were particularly relevant and it would perhaps have been better to see a student at the ATM.
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• The story about the tuition fees contained a lot of numbers about the current fee prices and the proposed new ones. I think that it might have been helpful to the viewer if the numbers appeared clearly on screen whilst the commentary explained what they showed as I found it quite hard to watch a visual whilst trying to follow the numbers given!
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• Another thing which could be improved is the length of time that the names of who was talking appeared on the screen as often they only appeared briefly and it was not possible to have time to read and register who people were. Similarly, when the final score of the football came up on screen it could have been up for longer to give the audience time to register it.
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• Whilst I thought it was good to have footage of sport events playing whilst the commentary about the game was heard I found that the clip of the girls playing netball was too loud and actually blocked out what was being said about the match, so perhaps in future the background noise on the clips could be muted as it was not important to hear people cheering.
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• I understand that the story about the Queen was important although I think more of a point could have been made about how close she was to Winchester. Also, the clip of her talking was muffled and it was not easy to understand what she was saying.
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• Whilst I thought the presenters were very professional, there were times when Tom Otrebski's arm was visible in shots when the sport was being reported. I think if he had been completely out of the shot it would have made it look more professional.  

These are mostly my personal opinions and overall I think the bulletin was of an extremely high standard.