Episode 3 Points of View

Good afternoon and welcome to Points of View -

your chance to take over the BBC and have your views aired on what

you've been watching - sometimes before you even watch.

As was the case this week with Monday's planned

edition of Panorama featuring North Korea.

No wonder North Korea is fast running out of friends.

The controversial decision to allow reporter John Sweeney to join

a group of students from the London School of Economics

on their visit to the country

made news before the programme even went to air.

And when it did broadcast, many of you were left

wondering if the controversy could have been avoided altogether.

We put your criticisms to the editor of Panorama, Tom Giles.

A lot of the hype, a lot of the fuss

and the controversy wasn't actually stirred up by us.

But aside from that, I'd say that this was a programme that was

played out to a mass audience on BBC One of well over five million.

That's the highest audience that Panorama's been able to get

since it went to 8:30 in 2007, and that should tell you there was

a huge public interest in what was going on in North Korea.

We were able to show that audience what was going on at that exact

historic moment when there was no other independent journalist there.

At the time when the regime was making extraordinary threats.

So I'm pretty confident that a lot of people came to it

and did learn something insightful and new.

More frustration, this time from Formula 1 fans who say the BBC

is ruining their enjoyment of the season

by letting the cat out of the bag.

Under new arrangements, BBC and Sky Sports now share the rights

to broadcast Formula 1 live.

The BBC will show nine of the rounds live,

with Sky Sports showing the remaining 11.

When they don't have the live rights,

the BBC will air highlight programmes later in the day.

Hello and welcome to qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix.

The first of the BBC's live Grand Prix coverage

came last Saturday, from the Shanghai International Circuit.

The qualifying round was broadcast at the ungodly hour of 6:00am.

That's great for the early risers.

But for those of you hoping to catch the sporting drama on the

highlights programme at the far more sociable hour of 1:00,

the TV news was out to spoil the party -

without so much as a warning.

Lewis Hamilton has qualified for pole position in tomorrow's

Chinese Grand Prix.

So is it just a question of tough luck for those who don't

get up early in the morning?

We put the question to Richard Burgess, Head of Sports News.

We do carry warnings.

We carry a warning every time ahead of a highlights programme

when we haven't shown the race live.

That addresses the major concern of most of the audience.

We also do the same with football ahead of Match Of The Day.

And we also do the same with other sports, if we haven't shown it live.

If we've shown the race live, then we don't give warnings.

It would seem they're not going to back down on this one.

If you want to avoid the results from trackside, you're either

going to have to get up early for the live programming

or avoid BBC news for the day!

Now, the issue of subtitling.

A valued service, but earning a "could do better" mark from some.

Can somebody tell me why the BBC subtitles are not in sync with

the pictures and are not accurate?

There we are. No subtitles.

It'll come in a minute.

There you are. "You are watching Breakfast on BBC News."

What was it? Three, four seconds?

Inevitably, when you're subtitling a programme live, there is

a delay between when the viewer hears the programme audio

and the subtitle appears on the screen.

A restructuring firm will buy the 141 stores...

Predominantly, we use respeaking technology,

where a subtitler will sit and listen to the programme's sound

and they will respeak the dialogue into a speech recognition engine,

which then translates that audio into text.

And that's what appears on screen.

We access the programme audio as early as possible.

And often we are listening to the sound coming directly

out of the studio, rather than waiting for that to go via

satellite or via a distribution network to the viewer.

There's also the problem of the accuracy.

"This is the day the Gazan met the roof."

What on earth does that mean?

'I don't even know how people sound any more... '

The subtitlers take a lot of time to train

vocabulary into their dictionaries.

Kim Jong Un, the Supreme Leader. Ban Ki Moon.

Inevitably, sometimes the speech recognition engine does not

translate what the subtitler is saying 100% accurately.

And that's when mistakes occur.

"Do you want O wind and a raised that picked?"

We do understand the frustrations that viewers feel.

We are in the process this year of rolling out new software

which will see a positive step change

in the levels of textual accuracy

that you see on-screen, without making a compromise

on the delay to those subtitles reaching the screen.

New software. Well, it's going to spoil the fun,

but it should make the subtitles we see on-screen less muddled.

Now, a muddle isn't something you'd expect from the high-brow quiz show

that is University Challenge -

the long-running series that pits the brightest of our students

against one another in a battle of brains.

But the brains behind the questions seem to have

suffered a lapse in concentration.

This is a question from the episode broadcast

on the 11th February this year.

Le Cid, La Veuve and Cinna are among the tragedies of which dramatist

born in Rouen in 1606 and a rival of Racine?

And this is that very same question from the episode just

nine weeks later in the series.

Le Cid, La Veuve and Cinna are among the tragedies of which dramatist

born in Rouen in 1606 and a rival of Racine?

In fact, three of the exact same questions were

aired across the two programmes.

-Sorry, we don't know.

-It's Corneille.

Did the programme makers think their duplication would go unnoticed?

Quiz makers be warned -

you can't get anything past the Points of View customers.

And you were very engaged last Friday with Have I Got News for You.

I'm Brian Blessed! Yes, it's me!

BOOMING LAUGH

Actor Brian Blessed was tasked

with chairing the weekly satirical panel show.

Am I on that?

His failure at times to include the panel members

really raised hackles.

Have I Got News For You,

praised by you on this programme just last week,

but a very different story this week.

From hero to zero in seven days.

Time now for the odd one out round.

< It's you.

THEY ALL LAUGH

Now, remember the great national tripod shortage where

wobbly camera work used to be de rigeur.

Some of you have been in touch to say it's back.

It's not just the wobbles, it's the fast moves,

quick edits and out-of-focus shots

that are making a lot of people feel a bit at sea.

Hello. Things have been pretty steady at the BBC of late.

But I've noticed the old woozy cam is coming back into fashion.

Will you stop it and give me a steady shot!

# Shake it, shake, shake it, shake it, shake it

# Shake it like a Polaroid picture

Really straightforwardly well executed.

# Shake it, shake, shake it, shake it, shake it... #

I turned on the Sewing Bee expecting to be taught how to darn my socks or

turn up my trousers, and the camera technique immediately put me off.

And after five minutes, I had to stop watching it

because they were zooming in and out. It was going in and out of focus.

'Patrick and May's first challenge will test how good

'the sewers are at following a basic pattern.'

After a few minutes watching this, I did feel slightly odd.

I feel as though I'm on a rollercoaster.

It's the zooming in and out.

You do really feel quite queasy after a time. Does it add to it?

Does it make it seem more dynamic?

I'm not quite sure that sewing up a pair of trousers needs to be dynamic.

Ha! D'you see what he did there?

And wobble-cam is by no means confined

to the sedate world of sewing, because many more of you

have noticed shaky shots creeping back elsewhere.

At the moment, you have warnings of flash photography

coming up in programmes.

So perhaps you should have nausea warnings.

Or woozy warnings.

I like that.

So are we witnessing the return of motion sickness to our screens?

We asked the powers that be who commission the factual programmes.

If you spot programmes on the move, do let us know.

BBC Four's The Secret Life of Rockpools proved

a real hit on Tuesday night.

Palaeontologist Professor Richard Fortey took us

to an underwater world we know so little about.

And not a wobble cam in sight.

In a rockpool, there is nothing quite as sinister

as a marauding starfish.

Using the edge of the shell,

a limpet can push the starfish away to prevent it climbing on top.

-There he goes. Look at that.

-That's really very agitated.

It becomes like an animated mushroom.

We can't say that rockpools lack drama.

Praise too for Casualty.

Last week's episode tackled the really difficult, and for some,

disturbing issue of female genital mutilation or FGM, as it is known.

The writer Sasha Hails is with me. Let's see a clip first.

Was it your sister that was due to have the operation?

Are you worried that someone might take her on another flight?

As long as you're a patient in this hospital,

I can help you and your little sister.

I'm pleased to say the writer, Sasha, joins us now.

Why tell this story?

Ten years ago, there was

a little girl who was affected by this in our neighbourhood.

I was haunted by her story ever since.

I've been looking for a way to tell it and finally,

Casualty had the courage to take it on.

And you had expert advice.

From Integrate Bristol and Daughters of Eve -

young people directly affected by this.

And when you talk to them,

you realise just how completely important it is.

Thank you.

And that is it from us for this week.

So keep in touch, please.

By post - at our new address, remember.

By phone. The number is charged as a local rate call from any landline.

Or join the messageboard. It's always lively there.

Finally, there's email.

Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd