Election night was great, wasn’t it? I managed to keep up ‘til about 3am, when Ohio officially came in.
My choice of coverage was the BBC. They did a lot right. But they did a lot wrong.
Jeremy Vine is a man I love to watch — or in his normal day job, listen to — and I was hoping election night would be his time to shine. I called it a coming of age in a piece for NewsWire in New Zealand.
But it was all a bit lost. Early doors — before any results came in — we were facing problems. The producers seemed unable to isolate Dimbleby’s voice out of Vine’s ear when he was using his funky touch screen. On one occasion, Vine whipped his ear-piece out, such was the extent of Dimbleby’s waffling in his ear.
Dimbleby is as much a fixture in election coverage as Peter Snow and his swingometer. But last night he looked tired right from the word go.
Amazingly, he made the most exciting night in world politics in a generation seem rather routine. More should have been made of Pennsylvania, that’s for sure, and when the final presidency-clinching result came in? I almost expected Dimbleby to come out with a cynical “who cares” remark.
I’ve seen the effort involved in the BBC election result service being a great asset to the coverage, but there’s no avoiding the fact it was SLOW on Ohio. Fox called it way before the BBC did. Fortunately, the pundits alongside Dimbleby made the public aware that Fox are unlikely to call a battleground state as Democrat given its fiercely Republican bias. They wouldn’t risk it. But Dimbleby refused to get excited. It wasn’t over until the fat BBC sang. Sadly, the other networks were on the encore while the Beeb was still enjoying the mid-way interval.
But where the American networks triumphed, the BBC innovated, right? Maybe. Their ‘less shouting, more statistics’ approach online was a breath of fresh air. Despite my insistence that tonight was going to be the night of social media and bloggers, I soon grew tired of some of the people online getting ahead of themselves. The BBC gave results, expert comment and quality journalism from the off. Good show. Except Dimbleby who, and the Standard agrees with me here, was off the pace.
Back on the television, we had the blog team. Or rather, two geeky-looking women in Times Square transfixed on their iBooks.
Who were they? We weren’t given so much as URL to check out their stuff. And we knew, before they spoke, that they weren’t great bloggers, or else they’d be working on the election in other, more productive ways.
Had Arianna Huffington been sat there casting an eye on the ‘sphrere then we might have had a reason to listen. But these two randoms offered no insight other than the ability to Google ‘Obama+result+florida” and hope for the best.
At one point, one of the bloggers said “My inside source in Florida says McCain’s lost”. Admittedly, she was right. But then many people predicted it. Here, the blogger was playing big-time journo. Inside source? Nobody says that anymore. If you’re going to say it, back it up. On television, you can’t get away with that sort of ambiguity.
I’m not blasting the role blogs played in this election. No way. I am, of course, a promoter of all things bloggy. I even toyed, today, with making my about page say I’m a social media evangelist — such is my determination that social media is the future of news.
But the BBC got it horribly wrong. These bloggers were little more than people with computers. They let the rest of us down. If the BBC plans to take blogging seriously in its coverage of the UK elections in May, they need to get themselves involved with the big name bloggers. Guido Fawkes springs to mind, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought the Beeb would take the risk.
The viewing figures for the BBC’s coverage were huge, but I hope that doesn’t breed complacency within the team producing the UK election show in May. Just because a lot of people watch it, doesn’t mean your coverage is good. If the World Cup Final was live on one channel and one channel only, then the viewers will be riveted no matter the quality of broadcast.
Yes, British viewers had a healthy choice — but only if they had Sky/Cable. And, since this was a night of bedtime viewing, many would have been restricted to the five trusty channels on analogue telly.
So, to sum up: Must try harder.
On a more cheerful note, well done America. While the front pages of today’s papers really, really sucked (owing to the time restraints), it was a wonderful moment seeing one Evening Standard seller shout “none left” outside Liverpool Street Station tonight.
It was almost as if people had to read it in a newspaper in order to really believe it.
