Sky News produce a three minute news bulletin for their website regularly throughout the day. The package presents the major news stories that are making the headlines, but does so in a short, sharp fashion. Sky is largely recognised as one of the major sources of news throughout the world, and indeed within the news industry. This package shows the corporation to be delivering a multi-platform product, which helps them to reach an online audience.
Within the three minutes allocated to this bulletin, Sky News address six different stories. By analysing the types of story that have been included, it becomes clearer as to the nature of the programme that they are attempting to deliver, as well as identifying a particular audience. In this case the news stories covered are as followed:
- North Korea’s attack on a South Korean island
- New Zealand minors trapped following a blast
- At least 378 people dead following stampede at Cambodian festival celebrations
- Irish Prime Minister putting final touches to economic plan
- Update on the situation with Qantas
- Burma pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is re united with her son
These stories are quite clearly, by their individual subject matters, the major news headlines in world news. This is interesting and shows that Sky must be aiming to reach a worldwide audience. Sky is a British broadcasting company, however, out of six stories, only one has a direct effect on a British audience. This being the economic plan of the Irish Prime Minister. The remaining stories may still be of interest to a British audience, however, news stories originating in the UK are obviously not top priority on this three-minute, news headlines bulletin.
The presenter is a female, however, Sky decide to use a voice of god narration method. Being a package purely based on delivering the headlines of major, world news stories, this method is effective. The reason that it is effective is that the camera shots shown are not focussed on a presenter, but on the news story. This emphasises the point that these are the major news stories, as it is the footage associated with the story that you can see. The only voice heard, is that of the presenter. No vox pops or interviews are used because it is a news bulletin that wishes to simply tell the story. The stories would then be covered in more depth via the Sky News digital television channel, or in specific parts of the website devoted to individual stories.
The footage used is generally B Roll with many shots taken with relation to the news story subject. Some footage shows people, other footage shows objects. For example, the story about the Cambodia stampede is accompanied with footage of the people of the area, to display emotion and the hectic situation is portrayed through the surroundings. On the other hand, when the bulletin provides an update on the development on Qantas airways, they use archive footage of when the original story of an engine exploding broke. CCTV footage is also used to show the moment that a blast caused minors to become trapped in New Zealand. Sky also uses contacts with overseas organisations. An example of this is when the main headline is reported with regard to the North Korean attack on South Korea. The video footage is accompanied by titles, but these are written in Korean, therefore this must have originated from a Korean media source.
The bulletin sets out to deliver a short and sharp insight to the main headlines in world news, and does this effectively with insightful footage into the stories as well as a narrator broadcasting the story. The bulletin reaches a mature audience and allows viewers to catch up with the day’s top news stories in the space of time that they are making a cup of tea. Perhaps, a couple more stories of British interest would make it a more complete package, however Sky is reaching a multi-national audience, so addresses the major news, and does it very effectively.
