YSTV Week: Difference between revisions

YSTV Week was born out of a desire to produce a better news programme.  At the time [[Bulletin (again)|Bulletin]] had slowly declined from being twice daily to just twice a week, and was seen as a chore by most members.  It was decided to start a fresh with a new concept.

It would focus almost entirely on campus news relevent to students.  There was a gap in the market for this at the time - Vision and Nouse were being published only ever three or four weeks, and URY's The Source usually relayed national news sent to them by SBN or IRN.  Bulletin in turn had usually regurgitated the contents of the York Evening Press's website, so it was decided to do something very different, and very studenty.  Unlike [[Bulletin (again)|Bulletin]] it would be weekly, so give more time for preparation and more time to produce other genres in the studio.

The programme would always aim to lead on a campus story, and later in the show would move onto local news or national news relevent to students, such as the top up fees debate.  After a few stories there would be a paper review, using the new remote-controlled overhead camera known as "Death Star" to look at the campus and local press.  A 'guest publication' also became a regular feature from 2004 onwards, usually examining the latest trash-mag such as <i>Nuts</i> and <i>Chat!</i> (there were also some great death star shots of a nude model whilst the presenters were reviewing <i> Attitude</i> magazine).  Following this would be sports news, and then a full weather forecast using YSTV's new [[chroma key]] mixer.  Finally there would be an "and finally" story.

Most importantly the show would have banter from the presenters, as [[Bulletin (again)|Bulletin]] had become rather dry towards the end.  The show would try to act as a "review" of the previous week, rather than the latest news, as by staying non-topical it could be repeated for the following seven days (using the [[Video Server]], although the first few editions were repeated by running the tape "live" from the control room).  The YSTV News "colours" were cream and purple, and this was reflected in the graphics.  Highlights of the first episode can be seen in [[Small Screen]]'s Summer 2005 Week 6 programme.

The programme recycled the set from [[Elections 2003]], designed and built by [[John Biltcliffe]] and [[Andrew Talbot]].  This was also to be used for [[Bona Dicta]] and future [[YUSU Election Nights|Elections]] programmes in order to build a corporate image for YSTV's News and Current Affairs output, similar to the BBC since 1999.  In addition, two arrangements of the same piece of up-beat library music were used for these programmes.  The titles were a fast-paced compilation of shots from around the university, edited by [[Dave Baker]], with words superimmposd by [[Ed Jellard]].  However these words were dropped in favour of the "clean" version in January 2005.  The set was also repainted a darker colour in January 2006.  Other than these, the show remained broadly similar for its three years on air.

Initially YSTV Week had no graphics as such.  The graphics machine in YSTV at the time - an ancient Amiga 1200 - was coming to the end of it's life, and was too unreliable to use, apart from one edition when it managed to churn out the end credits.  A new graphics PC was adopted in Autumn 2003 and dedicated YSTV Week graphics were made by [[Ed Jellard]].  These amounted to name captions, story captions and end credits.

Weather had been attempted before on YSTV's news output - most memorably on location with [[Chris Ward]] during the [[Bulletin (again)|Bulletin]] era, where he would turn up in a variety of locations with primitive 1970s BBC-style stick on symbols, including once in the Goodricke lift.  Other times primitive on-screen graphics were attempted, with even some basic [[chroma key]] at one point.  By the end of Bulletin however the weather was a verbal read-through of the forecast. This changed with the arrival of YSTV's [[chroma key]] mixed.  Initially the weather was presented from a green board mounted on a set board, using [[Ed Jellard]]'s WeatherEd programme.  Images were usually stolen from the BBC's weather website.  From January 2004 a whole wall of the studio was painted green, which made the set up far easier.  Later [[Drew Perry]] wrote a programme that produced YSTV's own weather graphics, entitled WeatherDrew.

YSTV Week was also one of the few programmes to have its own dedicated website.  The YSTV News website ran from early 2004 for around eighteen months, and was constructed by [[James Thorniley]] but mainly updated by [[Kate Rushworth]].  It would feature transcripts of that week's stories, photos and polls on the week's news.  As Vision and Nouse's websites were dormant during this period (and URY had no news site) it was the only online source for campus news during this period, something pointed out by the posters YSTV put up to advertise the site.  It was taken offline in summer 2005 after someone managed to hack into it and take the main YSTV website offline!

In 2006 the post of [[Controller of News and Current Affairs]] was axed, along with all other genre-specific roles.  In future producers of each individual programme would be elected outside of AGMs.  There was no-one willing to take on the role of producer of the programme, so after May 2006 regular production of the programme ended.  A few weeks later new [[Production Director]] [[Sarah Leese]] produced a one-off spoof edition of the show, satirising the format of the previous three years.  At the end of the summer term a new pre-recorded format of the programme was attempted, with presenters on location and the programme far shorter.  However this took copious amount of time to edit, and so the idea was not continued.  This turned out to be the last edition of the programme.  It would be December before the next incarnation of YSTV's news output appeared, suitably enough called [[YSTV News]].  In the meantime the YSTV Week set was used for new show [[FourPlay]], although later was used again (minus desk) for [[YSTV News]].