- Jon Zilkha
- 27 Sep 07, 03:25 PM
"The Italians change their prime ministers more often than some British men change their socks, what's been going on?" It's 05:04 AM on 28 March 1994 and Jane Garvey is asking the first questions on 5 Live. And so she set the tone for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½'s new news and sport network, irreverent and to the point, and one, as the critics would say, having a continuous conversation with its audience.
Thirteen years on, she's off. There've been countless awards for her and co-presenter Peter Allen, they've built an audience that is almost offended when one of them is away, and formed a double act which redefined how a news programme can sound - not that they would say anything so pretentious.
They've covered all the big stories, breathed life into any number of non-stories, interviewed everyone from the PM to the woman with the world's fattest cat and, no matter how dark the day's agenda, never failed to raise a smile.
For 10 days the texts and e-mails pleading with us to keep her have kept coming. "Glue her to that chair. Offer her more money," said one. "Forget Northern Rock, what about Ms Garvey leaving, that is the big news," said another. "How will we all cope? The two of you bring sanity and humour into our lives as we wind down from a day at work..."
Well we’d like to offer a permanent audio memento, the essential Garvey collection. Tell us about your favourite Jane moments - on the form on this page, or by leaving a comment below - and we’ll try to dust off the tapes and put together a compilation which you’ll be able to get online (there's a couple of clips available here already).
It's not been an easy decision for Jane, as she says - "I'm very sad to be leaving 5 Live, where Peter Allen tells me I've been fortunate to spend the best years of my life. When we started in 1994 I thought of myself as hip and happening, and of Peter as a cantankerous old git. 13 years on and I'm a weary wife and mother and he's still a cantankerous old git."
There you go.
Jon Zilkha is the editor of 5 Live Drive
- Mark Popescu
- 27 Sep 07, 12:56 PM
The launch of the Halo 3 video game earlier this week was one of those moments that a subject which does not normally make it on to the television news becomes a big deal. But as pointed out, we showed some footage of a Sony game when we were talking about the new Microsoft product.
Rory Cellan-Jones, our technology correspondent, explains how the mix-up occurred. He writes:
"This, I'll admit, was a bad mistake. Naturally I'm usually an enthusiast for digital technology, but this time it's really caught me out.
"In the days before we went digital tapes used to arrive in the building properly labelled and then make their way into our video library, where they would be viewed and their contents logged accurately.
"Now the pictures end up in digital form on our 'Jupiter' server. On this occasion a cameraman went out in August and shot some material about Halo 3 - but also shot footage of Sony's Killzone. He then loaded it into Jupiter.
"Spool forward a month - and after editing a story for the One O'Clock news which only featured Halo 3 material, a video editor and I were looking for some fresh shots for our Six O'Clock piece. He searched the Jupiter system and found something marked simply "lib(library) Halo 3". That was the footage uploaded in August - which also included Killzone and we ended up choosing that, not realising it was the wrong game. Result - disaster, and one replicated in the Ten O'Clock version of the story.
"What was impressive to me was the speed with which bloggers spotted the mistake. So the latest technology can lead you down the wrong path - but it can also bring any foul-ups under the spotlight of the eagle-eyed web generation.
"Sorry - we'll try to be more careful in future."
Mark Popescu is editor of daytime news
- Peter Barron
- 27 Sep 07, 12:00 PM
I thought I detected a bit of a new media milestone on Newsnight this week.
In an interview with Jeremy, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband took exception to a figure we had quoted in a piece about UK companies' investment in Burma. He also admitted - and this is a rarity for a politician - that he didn't know the answer to one of Jeremy's questions, and promised to clear up both points by posting something on our website.
Our webmaster Stuart was thrilled at the on-air endorsement.
The next day the FCO duly sent through a statement confirming that the figure we'd used was out of date. Then the Burma campaign group sent us a statement taking a dim view of the FCO's clarification (you can read those ). Viewers piled in too, demanding and debating the answers, while the programme producer responsible for the piece went online to direct the traffic.
Of course Newsnight items have been provoking debate on the website for years, but what I hadn't seen before was so many key participants in a story - government, pressure group, programme makers and the audience - engage in a spontaneous post-programme analysis online. I hope we can all do it again.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
The Guardian: Reports that one of the kidnappers of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ journalist Alan Johnston was killed yesterday in Gaza City. ()
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