Digital News: Similar News Report Style: BBC 3 '60 Second News'

As you may've seen, BBC 3 daily have a '60 Second News' reports often shown in the evening, highlighting the biggest news and often slightly targeting the BBC 3 audience e.g. latest celebrity gossip. Hosted by both male and female presenters, the idea is mainly to aware the younger target audience whom may not be interested in the news, or in fact simply concluding the day's news in brief. This interested me and my group as it follows a similar style as to what we want - inviting, simple and aimed at a younger audience.

Below is a brief analysis of one of the news report highlighting the key conventions and points.

BBC 3 60 SECOND NEWS (2010)

Screenshot taken from 60 Second News (2010)

Almost immediately, you gain this casual and inviting feel for the news. The dress style is casual yet smart and the presenter only goes by his first name - keeping everything simple. The presenter's NVC too is very smiley and happy, which too is aimed to make the audience feel comfortable so that they are likely to listen more.

The branding is almost quite vibrant, adding to this inviting tone. A clipart graphic of a television is used to show the stories giving this feel of informality, almost parallel to the formality of the miss-en-scene on major news reports like BBC 1.

The stories are varied: ranging from sports, to personal stories, to global news and then celebrities. 

After watching a few, there is a lack of political stories, thus reinforcing how this targets a younger and more casual audience. There is a story of Prince Harry in this report, however it is on a less serious note and instead shows him dancing to raise money for the Haiti earthquake. Therefore, the audience are generally seeing stories which are happier and more positive (however some sad stories are also shown, giving a little balance) unlike your usual global daily news.

The reasons why it is only '60 seconds' is not just so that it is less likely to loose the audience's interest, but mainly because it is aired in between adverts on shows. 

Although some readers may feel that the strap line on the bottom of the advert is quite fast, it is used to show the latest music news i.e. new songs being released, the results of the UK charts, etc. This too targets the BBC 3 audience and almost acts as a backup technique to make sure the audience don't loose interest or more importantly want to learn more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X4hahV_oLo
This news report is also very similar in terms of the style and even the stories

Conclusion

To conclude, the whole style and theme you gain from these news reports are very clarified and are easy to understand. It consists of a simple, informative yet casual approach which has been adapted to suit its target audience, unlike the major news channels. This is a similar idea which we want to do for our news report due to us focusing on a similar target audience.