How well does the opening section of London Tonight cater for your needs? Essay

For this piece of work I have decided to work on the news program ‘London Tonight’. It is broadcasted on ITV at 18:30 on a daily basis. It is shown at this time as it is after the BBC News which starts at 18:00. Once the commercials from the previous programme has finished the start of London Tonight is shown. This opening section is very important as it must grab the attention of the viewer to make them keep watching the show. They do this in numerous ways. They need to let their viewers no what their watching so the opening scenes are always the same, they have the same music and graphics and starts the show by saying the headlines. They begin with the main headlines followed by the sports headline. This is to let the viewer know what is about to be shown. It also needs to show who the news is aim towards. For example if it were aimed to children then the opening scene would be like that of ‘Newsround’ and the language used would not be of a high vocabulary and would be informal. London Tonight is aimed at adults and therefore it is more formal and serious than on Newsround. London Tonight show the opening scene very well as it kept me concentrating on the news and nothing else. The presenters on London Tonight are dressed formally as it is tailored towards adults and they must look smart. The news is presented quite seriously when it comes to serious matters but not so serious when the sports is shown. This may be as they want the audience to take the Main headlines seriously. They want the audience to relax more when showing the sport as it’s not as serious as the issues brought up in the main headlines. Everyone has different expectations from the news and therefore the news must be directed at a certain audience. This is done by what headlines is shown on the news programme. The main headline in London Tonight was on the Taliban and how they wanted American and British soldiers out of the country and were burning down schools and libraries.. This was a certain report I was interested in as it relates to me. This was not the only reason I carried on watching, the crew who had been filming had no protection at all and had even come across the Taliban who were armed. The Taliban were threatening to attack and soon enough the police had come. We can see from this report that it managed to grab the viewer’s attention in many ways. The film crew managed to capture a school which had been burnt down, at first you think this is the interesting part of the report, but then we see the Taliban rushing in firing their guns and then the police rushing in. This particular scene had some ‘action’ in which would have kept viewers fixed on the channel. To see this would have been a shock to the public and it is very rare to come across the Taliban especially while trying to film on a show. As this is a real life situation the audience is fixed to what is happening especially as there is mentioning of an attack on video footage. Once the video had been shown the presenters started to discuss the report and went into much depth of why the Taliban were doing what they did. They also showed a little bit about Saddam Hussains trial as there is a connection with the headline of the Taliban. Other news articles that were shown were those of the follow ups on a bank robbery which had occurred. This was the main headline a few days back and therefore were keeping the audience updated with the subject, this is another reason people would carry on watching. As they would have heard about this in the news recently they would like to be kept updated so showing this again would grab the attention of news watchers again. More headlines are shown and is then followed by the sport, this is part of the news I enjoy as I am a big sports fan. The sport for me was not as good as I thought it would have been. It showed about the rugby and football and also about the 2012 olympics campaign. Although it showed about the Champions League matches in the football it did not go into great depth about it and therefore didn’t get my attention as much and the 2012 campaign I felt was a little boring. This is because the 2012 olympics is going to be held in London and therefore they thought this would be good to show on the London Tonight. As the news doesn’t concentrate that much about sport this could be why I didn’t find it as interesting. Overall I think the news programme was quite a success. It had managed to get my attention from the start and keep me interested. The setting was quite good as it showed Big Ben in the background giving it the London feel. The presenters weren’t too serious but yet manage to get the news across to the audience in the right way. There were many camera angles as to which the news presenters were shown which didn’t make it boring always looking in one direction. The headlines reported were of good interest to a wide variety of audiences but I think it is aimed more at young adults as it seems quite active. It tailored the needs of the audience very well as it not only showed London news but world wide affairs too. The only problem with the news programme would be that serious sport fans would not get a very in depth report on the news but they will get the main sport headlines. So in conclusion a very well put together news programme.