History
Originally known as John Craven's Newsround, it was mostly presented by John Craven between 4 April 1972 and 22 June 1989. Originally, stand-in presenters came from main BBC News bulletins, including Richard Whitmore. The programme's reporter was Lucy Mathen. By the 1980s, the programme had developed its own presentation team including Roger Finn and Helen Rollason with Craven in the dual role of chief presenter and programme editor.
Shortly before Craven's departure, the show was renamed Newsround, and was now anchored by a rotating team of presenters. Past presenters have included David Bull, Juliet Morris, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Julie Etchingham, Chris Rogers, Kate Sanderson, Matthew Price, and Becky Jago. Regular reporters on the programme, who have also presented it, include Paul McDowell, Paul Welsh, Lizo Mzimba and Terry Baddoo.
The distinctive opening theme used for the first fifteen years of the programme was not composed especially for it, but is instead the opening eight bars of a 1968 cover of Johnny One Note by Ted Heath and his Music. The closing sting used the last couple of bars of New Worlds by John Baker, recorded by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The theme has been updated many times throughout its run (1986, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2006, and the recent 2008 incarnation).
Newsround was the first British television programme to break the news of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on 28 January 1986. As the event was shown during the opening titles, it is often erroneously stated that the tragedy happened live on air, but it in fact happened about fifteen minutes earlier. (There was a "Recorded Earlier" caption on the screen. This edition was presented by Roger Finn, who had only recently joined the programme.
The programme was also first in Britain to report an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in Vatican City in 1981 and provided the first reports from the Windsor Castle fire of November 1992.
In February 2002, Newsround expanded from a sole ten-minute programme on weeknights to through-the-day bulletins seven days a week to tie-in with the launch of the CBBC Channel. With this included a new theme, titles and presenting team. In 2009, a small bureau for the programme was opened at the BBC's former Manchester studios. As part of the relocation of the BBC Children's Department, Newsround began broadcasting from new studios at MediaCityUK in Salford Quays on Monday 21 November 2011. No changes where made except Newsround now had a smaller studio.
Read more about this topic: Newsround
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)