Vince Matthews has decided to launch a 24-hour news channel. At first, he was daunted, but after a brief spot of research he’s now brimming with confidence.

Article first published: Sept/Oct 2007

We’ve decided we’d like to include a 24-hour news program on our new online TV channel, The Reel Show, so I’ve been investigating how other news channels do it. And where better to start than that trusty pillar of the broadcasting establishment, the BBC? BBC News 24, to be precise. And this is what I’ve discovered.

First, I have to find teams of two newsreaders, one male, one female, and slap so much make-up on them they look like Coco the Clown’s jetsetting siblings. A bit of Botox doesn’t go a miss here either. The female must be attired in a very sparkly low cut outfit for maximum distraction and the male must have a full head of hair, no matter what his age, because there are definitely no baldies allowed to read the news. And if they have to hit the Grecian 2000, so be it. Definitely no fatties allowed either. If we’re going to compete with the big outfits, our presenters need to be able to take turns in saying a sentence each, and speak over each other at every opportunity. And most importantly, they must be able to express the most banal inanity with utter confidence and conviction. If this sounds familiar to our American readers, it’s because BBC News 24 has stolen the US style sheet (except they haven’t got so many pointless graphics and lower thirds, but they’re working on it – and so are we).

Can you imagine, there used to be a time when broadcasters went out of their way to make life difficult for themselves? They employed newsreaders who often wrote their own scripts. Some of them were even trained journalists who had a completely unnecessary in-depth knowledge of political issues and current affairs. Most of them could even pronounce the names of foreign politicos. Now, who’d want to employ someone like that? A newsreader is there to sell the channel, not to inspire people to think. Once one of them starts reporting the news and questioning the political process, who knows where it will end? Unbiased reporting will spread through your organization like a cancer. And that’s in nobody’s interest. And we don’t want any of that interviewing people who make important decisions malarky. Far safer to get them interviewing each other standing outside random buildings. Journalists aren’t going to sell the channel. What we need are celebrities – the kinds of people who can supplement their incomes by appearing on celebrity challenge shows. Because, obviously, possessing any kind of gravitas is a totally out-moded concept. A bit of sexual scandal wouldn’t go amiss, either, so long as it doesn't turn anybody’s stomach while they’re eating their Corn Flakes.

Well, that’s the presenters sorted. What about content? Well, I’ve discovered that that’s easier still. Lots of mawkishness is a must. Examples are legion, but I’ll pick a random one I saw recently. The subject was the murder of a young family. We opened with the shot of a back yard, replete with an empty swing and clothes hanging on the washing line. As soon as I heard the opening line, I knew they’d hit the jackpot: “The washing is out on the line, but there is no-one left to take it in.” Inspired.

We can learn a lot from local news too. Local news reporters bring something completely new to the equation: the ability to utterly murder the English language. Here’s one of my favorites about a pair of twins who joined the sea cadets or some such nonsense:

“They say things come in threes, but in this case, they came in twos.”

That’s so brilliant, it’s worth considering more deeply. “They say.” Shame on you if you’re thinking something along the lines of, “Who the hell are they, and who gives a stuff what they say if they can’t say anything useful?” This is cutting edge 21st century journalism. “They say things.” No need to qualify it. Pointless using an adjective when there’s no compulsion to articulate a meaningful noun. “They say things come in threes, but in this case, they came in twos.” I don’t think I’ve ever before encountered a delayed drop intro where every single word is redundant. The total sum of knowledge possessed by the viewer is actually decreased after hearing that sentence. That’s eloquence on a Shauvian level, and the perfect vehicle to transport us from one ad break to the next.

The BBC, of course, doesn’t carry adverts. Or not officially. Instead, it has ‘reports’. Someone released a new mobile phone? No problem. That’s news. Look, it takes pictures too! What’s that? A character in a soap opera is pregnant and only the script writers know who the father is? That’s grist to the mill for our sofaologists. Someone at an unchartered Scottish University has written a paper saying that cats meeow with regional accents? Bring ’em on!

When we decided to launch a news channel, I initially thought it was going to be tough. But now I’ve done some investigating, I’ve realized that the key is never to do any investigating ever again. That way, we’re guaranteed success.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.