BBC news reports through the years

For our news reports, I wanted to see the different graphics that were used throughout the years. Yet once I started researching all these different backgrounds, I realised that using graphics is a relatively new concept used in newsrooms today. BBC news on the television did not start until 1954 and from here we look at the different backgrounds used and how it has evolved from a plain background to a big bold and informative graphic.

BBC news started in 1954, before it used to just be a newsreel and a continuity speaker. Then, many of the news stories were for "entertainment purposes" and not for serious information. Here on the left we can see one of the first live news reports where the background was of the world and with a microphone in the corner of the picture. This shows shows how plain and original news reports were when they first began. On the right we see another news report shown in the 1960s, it may of not evolved much from the 1950s but the background of this news report is of the other workers within the department and we still see this today in some BBC news reports.

In the early seventies, news reports changed to where more pictures were shown while all the news reports were described by the newsreader. We can see the background of the news report would just be of a plain colour with the logo of "BBC news" showing within the background, this was one of the first graphics used during a news report. As we plan to say the Klinger factory closed within the late 70s to early 80s, this would be the best type of news background to do for our trailer. This is quite easy as it is just one colour and then a graphic of BBC news.

In the 80s, we begin to see more graphics shown within the news report with the logo of "BBC news" embedded into the studio instead of a graphic. The studio was made up of horizontal lines which co-ordinated with the logo of BBC news then in the 80s (shown above). This also paved way for pictures shown alongside the news reporter while he was reporting his story. Before, montages of pictures were shown while the news reporter was speaking about the story. If pictures were not superimposed within the report, it would either zoom into the reporter or show the logo. This is useful if we did not want to show an image along the reporter and instead show a montage of pictures. Throughout the 80s, we see the backgrounds of news reports change in terms of colour (to see what was visually attractive) and other backgrounds (i.e. background of the newsroom) but not much change when it came to graphics used during the news report.

It wasn't until the 90s where we started to see full graphic news reports. In April 1993, we saw the start of the BBC's virtual news studio which meant the majority of the visual aspects in the news report was computer generated. Even the filming of the news report was done by a remote control from a gallery within the newsroom and this meant there was a lot of flexibility when it came to the backdrop and layout of the news report.

Today we see more of a studio compared to a fully computer generated studio. This means it has the flexibility in showing big stories on a giant graphic screen but also being able to demonstrate on this platform as well. There was also the removal of the graphic beside the newsreader to make way instead for edited news footages after the report has been said. Graphics shown within 24 hour news channels (shown in a post before) are different to these daily news bulletins as they are only giving out a summary of the days' news compared to 24 hours, 7 days a week constantly of news.