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The BBC has up sticks and moved quite a large chunk of its operation up to Salford Media City. It’s all part of a cost saving effort, moving out of the expensive capital. Unfortunately not everything has been going hunky dory, as this caption balls-up shows.
The BBC has called it just a “teething problem”, but an anonymous BBC staffer has told The Register it’s actually a symptom of a whole bunch of crappy IT problems and incompatibilities plaguing the broadcaster.
Whatever the reason, the BBC better get its act in gear soon – it’s due to see a load more shows move up from London in the next couple of months. I bet you the machine that pumps out the captions is still running Windows 98 or something stupid like that. Meanwhile, that poor kid’ll probably never live that down. Her moment of fame ruined by a computer glitch. [The Register]
Image credit: @Andy_Barton
You sure she isn’t a recovering alcoholic anyway?
Could be. They start em young these days.
We know she is a hoodie, probably part of a gang.
Seriously she looks very cute and sweet, I even felt bad calling her a hoodie.
Look at those teeth, the unkempt hair, the vacant expression and that red mark on the right of her hood looks like a bloodstain. As the saying has it “It’s grim up North”
I would be surprised if this was the first caption error on news channels, I don’t see how this has much relation to moving to Salford, sounds like a cop-out by that BBC staffer. I will also never trust a person who uses the phrase “the software just wont talk to each other”. It sounds like something my dad would say.
Also if this was filmed in Salford there is nothing to say that little girl isn’t a recovering alcoholic, in fact it’s likely she is.
Cost savings all well and good, but as the saying goes… If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. F***ing northern monkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpnkokAJG60
Why Win98 is stupid?
Windows 98 isn’t stupid, it was great in 98. Still using it for a production machine now, that’s stupid.
Not necessarily. Placing captions on top of videos is not such an advanced task that it should be allowed to be only done on Windows 7
Don’t get me wrong, I work on Win7, but I see nothing wrong in using older versions of any OS for anything that can be handled by that version.
This is a mistake? Look at her eyes.
Just sayin’.
Trust me. Speaking as a BBC ‘staffer’ who recently moved from TV centre to Salford the IT is much better in the new office. Windows 7, finally!
Am I wrong in thinking that North West Tonight has always been in the North West anyway?
It used to be based in Manchester but moved to Salford last year.
Windows 98!? You mean Vista…
Nah, Windows ME.
Lazy Giz!
If you’d asked anyone, like an ex BBC staffer, hey’d have told you about the terrible automated system used in the early days of that channel. Essentially, it lined up all the lower thirds (captions) in a queue, and they were then triggered by the vision mixer / director – I think they even tried embedding caption times in the playout system at one point, so it was triggered automatically. Cheaper than having a graphics op sit there all day you see. Unfortunately, if you missed one out for whatever reason, it could make EVERY caption after this wrong, with often hilarious consequences.
With live news bulletins, such as the one above, it’s far more likely someone just made an error – the kid was probably not meant to be captioned at all, and someone just went early with a graphic – reflex action when you see a talking head…
They reported on the QLD flooding with a shot of “Anna Bligh – Queensland Resident” when she is the Premier of QLD. Blindingly ignorant error that I don’t think could be put down to a “teething problem”.
Still much better than most news networks, though.
Saw this live, was hilarious!
They had some recovering alcoholics on just before this.
I love that The Register made an attempt to censor the little girl’s pic and Giz didn’t!