How effective are Sky Newswall presentations?



Regular readers will know that I've never been much impressed by the way in which BBC television news and current affairs programmes like Newsnight have become more and more dependent on PowerPoint-style presentations by their reporters (see below).

Unlike the BBC, Sky News doesn't have its reporters standing on one side of a screen but directly in front of their cinemascope-style 'newswall'.

Watching some of their reports on Libya, I began to think that it worked rather better than the BBC's reporter-standing-next-to-a-screen approach. But there are two reasons why I don't feel able to decide between them just yet.

The first is that I don't see it as often as BBC News and therefore need to watch more Sky News before being able to come to a definite conclusion.

The second is that the above clip uses a map, and maps can be a very helpful visual aid for audiences (see Lend Me Your Ears, pp. 152-3).

In fact, the above clip from Sky News reminded me of a brilliant lecture I attended about twenty years ago. The subject was the Soviet economy and the audience was made up of delegates on a general management course. The lecturer's only visual aid was a gigantic map of Europe and Asia that was pinned on the wall behind him. Rather than using a wobbly laser pointer, his pointer of choice was a billiards cue with which he punctuated his lecture by urgent dashes from side to side to point at the places he was talking about.

The Sky News presenter in the above clip doesn't dash from side to side - and was certainly a lot less worried that I was when a graphic of a jet fighter plane zoomed in and nearly hit him (1.05 minutes in).

But the question is: how effective are 'newswall' presentations when they're showing something other than a map?

I'm planning to watch Sky News more closely in the weeks ahead and will report back in due course. Meanwhile, I'd be interested to know what other viewers think about Sky's 'newswall' - and whether they think it's an improvement on the way BBC News replicates more conventional PowerPoint presentations.

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Cameron's good timing

The UN resolution on Libya, in which the part played by David Cameron in pushing it through has been getting a good press (so far), happened at a rather convenient time for him. Party spring conferences, especially their Scottish spring conferences, tend not to get much media coverage.

But today the Conservative Party's spring conference in Perth did get quite a lot of media coverage, and provided the Prime Minister with a nice opportunity to say more about his stance on Libya.

And notice that, unlike the Deputy Prime Minister at the Liberal Democrat spring conference last week, Mr Cameron spoke from a lectern and looked considerably more statesmanlike than Nick Clegg did as he walked around the platform pretending not to be using a script while reading from teleprompters (HERE).


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Results of the defend a doomed dictator speechwriting competition

In case you're wondering what this is all about, you can catch up on the details here:

Results
And the (first-past-the-post) winner is .... Julien Foster for speech D (see below). Second is ... Bryn Williams for speech F (see below).

What clinched it for Mr Foster was that his final line made all three judges (and me) laugh.

Judges Collins and Finkelstein concluded: 'We thought E and D were amusing, which we thought was the right way to approach the contest. They were both funny and just plausible enough. But, if we had to choose between them, D just gets the nod for the simple yet inexplicable reason that the David Steel gag at the end really made us laugh.'

Judge Grender noted "Enjoyed all of these and laughed out loud at the thought of Gaddafi saying 'Go back to your constituencies – and prepare for government'. But in the end it was F who demonstrated the rhetorical flair that all good pupils of Max Atkinson (or avid readers of Lend Me Your Ears) aspire to. The use of 'wind' contrasted with 'fire' was great. The liberal use of 3-part sentences had echoes of the rhetoric of Obama's best not Gaddafi's worst. 'Step back' so we can 'march forward' gave it a nice strong ending. Have not as yet noticed an ad on Working for You for a new speech writer for Libyan dictator, but if one comes up you should most definitely send in your c.v."

Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to enter the contest by submitting such high quality speeches and to Phil Collins, Danny Finkelstein and Olly Grender for passing judgement on them.

Olly Grender will obviously be receiving a previously unannounced Brown Nose Award for weaving an advertisement for one of my books into her comments.

First Prize: Speech D by Julien Foster
Friends, Libyans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears.
I come to bury Colonel Gadaffi, not to praise him.

I’m not going to read to you from a document.
But speak to you from the heart.

I’m not going to address you in classical Arabic.
But talk to you in Libyan.

Above all, I’m not going to hide from you.
I’m going to say it as it is.
And it may be a bit messy. But it’ll be me.

We now have a huge opportunity for change.
It’s an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

We’ve seen it happening in Egypt, in Tunisia…
…and now, here, in Libya.

Not change brought about by foreign governments.
Not change brought about by traitors.
But change brought about by us, the people.

And there are some who are trying to resist that change.
So I say to you very simply:
Go back to your constituencies – and prepare for government.


Second Prize: Speech F Mugabe's Last Stand by Bryn Williams
The West proclaim the winds of change blow through Africa once more.
They can't contain their pleasure.
Their smugness betrays them.
It clings to every word.

But these aren't the winds of change that blew in the past.
The winds which freed us from the bonds of slavery.
The winds which spared us from the blight of exploitation.
The winds which saved us from the suppression of our colonial masters.

These aren't winds founded on freedom or liberation.
These aren't winds at all.

These are fires.
Fires fuelled by exploitation.
Fires stoked by the resource thirsty tyrants of the West.
Fires lit to incinerate the fabric of our culture.

The West have learned that regime change doesn't work.
Afghanistan and Iraq have failed.
They have failed for two reasons.
Their cultures, like ours, are unsuited to democracy.
Their governments, unlike yours, are under Western control.

The West have learned that regime change doesn't work.
They are not prepared to risk it a third time.

Zimbabwe,
Believe me.
The West are not empowering a change of regime.
The West are implementing a change of policy.

A return to the policy of the past.
A return to the policy of exploitation.
A return to colonisation.

If controlling the government doesn't work,
become the government.

You are hearing whispers of a better future from people who are faceless.

You are not hearing firm declarations from the leaders of the future.
You are not hearing solid plans to deal with the problems of today.
You are not hearing robust proposals to pay off the debts of the past.

Why are there no leaders
no plans and
no money?

Because they don't exist.

The whisperers exist.
The rumour mongers exist.
Enemies always exist.

Waiting to exploit you,
your family,
and your future.

Whether we like it or not
this policy of African exploitation is a political fact.

So I ask you to take a moment,
take a deep breath,
and take a step back.

Take a step back from the future of their making.
So, together, we can march forward
to a future of our choosing.

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Could Clegg improve his impact with better speechwriting and rehearsal?

As is explained in my books and illustrated by numerous video clips posted on this blog, the contrast is one of the most important and reliable rhetorical devices for triggering applause in speeches. So it can often be instructive to look at 'deviant cases', where they don't work quite as smoothly as they could or should have done, to see what went wrong and what, if anything, we can learn from them.

There was at least one such example during the Deputy Prime Minister's speech winding up yesterdays conference of the Liberal Democrats in Sheffield yesterday after a simple past/present contrast:

Clegg: "We cherished those values in opposition. Now we're living by them in government."

But, as you'll see, the applause didn't start straight away and, when it did, after his first "So yes", it sounded somewhat lukewarm (i.e. not only delayed, but also lasting well below the 'standard' burst of 8 ± 1 seconds):


It could. of course, be argued that this merely reflected the audience's ambivalence about their party's involvement in the coalition government. But there were at least two technical errors without which it could have induced a much more prompt and longer-lasting response.

1. Better scripting?
In stead of using a pronoun ('them') to refer to 'those values' in the second part of the contrast, the speechwriters could have made the sequence work better by repeating 'those values', so that it read as follows:

"We cherished those values in opposition.
Now we're living by those values in government."

2. Better rehearsal?
A second reason why the audience delayed before applauding was that Clegg didn't stop immediately after the second part of the contrast, but rushed on to continue with "so yes-'.

This may have been because he was too glued to the words coming up on the screens and was 'teleprompted' onwards, or because he hadn't rehearsed it enough beforehand - or perhaps a combination of the two.

In any event, a rather crucial line only managed to prompt a delayed and lukewarm response, leaving him looking vaguely perplexed as to what to do next, other than repeating the same two words waiting there on the screens.

So what?
You might think that this hardly mattered on a day when the news was dominated by the Japanese earthquake. And you'd be dead right, were it not for the fact that this particular sequence was one of the few that actually did make it on to the prime-time news bulletins last night and, via ITN, on to YouTube.

Related posts
On delayed and/or lukewarm applause
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Why I never signed the ThatchCard

Here's the latest discovery from my continuing office removal. I can't remember where it came from, but it was probably a gift from Lord Gnome of Private Eye.

Note that I never actually signed it - for the obvious reason that my interest in analysing political speeches meant that I'd have welcomed the chance of meeting her in her prime, for research purposes, you understand - and this far outweighed any sympathy I might have had for the message being purveyed by the ThatchCard's publisher.
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