Bulletin (again)

Bulletin
Genre:	News
First Broadcast:	1997
Last Broadcast:	May 2003
Producer(s):	Julie Knox Andrew Carter

Bulletin first ran on YSTV around the turn of the 1990s, and won an award at NaSTA.

The name was revived in 1997 when YSTV's News and Current Affairs output was revamped by News Editor Julie Knox. Bulletin would run three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and live up to its name - a quick round-up of the news, sport and weather with occasional short VTs. This regularity in the early days proved a good way of getting new members involved.

However, in 1999-00 Andrew Carter the then News Editor decided to try and run a "proper" news service and put the programme on every night of the week, with even a lunchtime "update" attempted at one point. The news content was nearly always rehashed from the BBC and Yorkshire Evening Press websites, with two presenters sitting at a plain black news-desk with a red curtain on the front against a black background. The programme suffered from a lack of VT inserts because there was rarely enough time to produce them given the five-nights-a-week schedule. Andrew's somewhat abrasive style tended to result in most of our journalists getting fed up and leaving!

The show had a number of title sequences - the first by Chris Parker depicted a crew on location filming an item, before returning to the control room and putting the tape in a UMatic machine. Due to the frequency of use, the master tape of this was practically unbroadcastable by 1999 and a new title sequence by Chris Ward featuring flying "Bulletin" lettering over shots of campus and the control room was introduced. This was followed in 2002 by another, this time entirely graphical, using the same piece of music. This title sequence was re-vamped in October 2002 to include shots around the university in the background

By 2001 the show was three times a week again, and in 2002 this was reduced to twice a week - Monday and Thursday - after the Friday edition was poorly crewed.

In May 2003 the decision was taken to end the show and replace it with the longer and more local YSTV Week. This earned Production Director Jonathan Bufton the nickname "Buffy the Bulletin Slayer". Highlights of the final episode can be seen in Small Screen's Summer 2005 Week 6 programme.

Bulletin was featured twice on proper telly - a documentary about the making of the show was shown on BBC Choice Scotland's student TV night in January 2000, and an early edition of the show featured on Tyne Tees TV's North East Tonight to mark YSTV's 30th anniversary in November 1997.