Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Access programming (temporary) fail

In relation to a previous post on the Australian flood and cyclone coverage in Queensland, the ABC's MediaWatch programme also noticed how amazing those Auslan signers were. However, they and their viewers also noticed something else.

Here is the link to the MW video. It's a couple of minutes long.

Basically, in order to get a more dramatic close-up shot of Premier Anna Bligh speaking at the pressers, the cameras of no less than three networks zoomed in on her face and excluded the signer altogether from the picture seen on tellies across the nation. This head and shoulders image of Bligh was then used on a graphic next to exciting but already seen images of flooding set on a loop as she was speaking.

It was a case of the Magic Disappearing Signer. Thankfully, they got wise to this shitty move soon after and started thinking about the needs of their audience over their own desire for a shiny-loooking end product. Access-friendly coverage resumed.

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