Newsjack - Series 3 Page 31

Quote: Sound of Spinach @ July 12 2010, 4:10 PM BST

I'd like to see the people here get their submissions used, I'm not sure I'd like to be the only one to say "woohoo, I did it" incase it was perceived as showing off!

Innocence? what is this word of which you speak?

I haven't let anyone read what I've written since I started, but as I thought my own GCHQ one was especially good I let a mate of mine read it, the miserable sod just said "oh they'll never use that" so I'm quite keen to shove it down his throat if it's as good as I thought it was.

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Stick it on the Critique section SOS if you want a proper debrief.

Can some of our chums here who belong to the Twitterati keep us updated when they manage to condense...

"We know our website says Monday noon absolute deadline for sketches and we mean it - don't *dare* send any sketches in after that. Unless we're not happy with the stuff we've got, so tell you what - feel free to send in more contemporary stuff on Wednesday. That's when our mates normally hand it in anyway, and this week they've not bothered. We make the rules up as we go along to suit ourselves"

...into 140 characters please?

Quote: Failed Comedy Writer @ July 12 2010, 9:55 PM BST

"We know our website says Monday noon absolute deadline for sketches and we mean it - don't *dare* send any sketches in after that. Unless we're not happy with the stuff we've got, so tell you what - feel free to send in more contemporary stuff on Wednesday. That's when our mates normally hand it in anyway, and this week they've not bothered. We make the rules up as we go along to suit ourselves"

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Where did you get that from?

Thursday (until 6pm): Logging on. Just in case. Kissing photo of M.J. on the wall if material is in.

I didn't realise you still had that picture. Didn't you used to play darts with it.

"We know our website says Monday noon absolute deadline for sketches and we mean it - don't *dare* send any sketches in after that. Unless we're not happy with the stuff we've got, so tell you what - feel free to send in more contemporary stuff on Wednesday. That's when our mates normally hand it in anyway, and this week they've not bothered. We make the rules up as we go along to suit ourselves"

...into 140 characters please?

To be fair to NJ, they set up the Twitter page to inform us of any last minute gaps they wish to fill.
So it is some extra time for us.

For example, they clearly hadn't received a suitable Ashcroft one-liner by Tuesday, so they got a bit desperado by Wednesday and twittered a material request.

And yes, I'm sure helpful peeps will repeat twitterings on this thread too

Quote: Failed Comedy Writer @ July 12 2010, 9:55 PM BST

"We know our website says Monday noon absolute deadline for sketches and we mean it - don't *dare* send any sketches in after that. Unless we're not happy with the stuff we've got, so tell you what - feel free to send in more contemporary stuff on Wednesday. That's when our mates normally hand it in anyway, and this week they've not bothered. We make the rules up as we go along to suit ourselves"

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I quite like the twitter feed they've set up, it's the closest thing to feedback you get - knowing what topics not to write about and getting a second chance to cover off topics they're short about. They've got 163 followers on twitter so if you follow it your odds of getting something on are well over 0.5%.

Granted I 'follow' their twitter feed by setting a bookmark in my browser, which is probably the modern day equivalent of printing out all your e-mails before reading them. But hey, whatever it takes.

Quote: Failed Comedy Writer @ July 12 2010, 9:55 PM BST

Can some of our chums here who belong to the Twitterati keep us updated when they manage to condense...

"We know our website says Monday noon absolute deadline for sketches and we mean it - don't *dare* send any sketches in after that. Unless we're not happy with the stuff we've got, so tell you what - feel free to send in more contemporary stuff on Wednesday. That's when our mates normally hand it in anyway, and this week they've not bothered. We make the rules up as we go along to suit ourselves"

...into 140 characters please?

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But, FCW, you're on Twitter so why not just follow them?

Hmm. I'm sounding too cynical again. I just need to silence that voice nagging me that whatever I'm writing is just going to be mercilessly binned by those Newsjack people.

I'll be positive from now on - I'm convinced they may actually read it this week, which has filled me with enthusiasm to shit out some vox pops now.

I do apologise for my negative sardonic tone.

Quote: Failed Comedy Writer @ July 13 2010, 9:14 AM BST

Hmm. I'm sounding too cynical again. I just need to silence that voice nagging me that whatever I'm writing is just going to be mercilessly binned by those Newsjack people.

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Maybe you're doing something wrong that's simple to rectify. Are you using the fonts they prefer? And getting their style? Most important of all, are you sending them £20 via PayPal?

Quote: Failed Comedy Writer @ July 13 2010, 9:14 AM BST

Hmm. I'm sounding too cynical again. I just need to silence that voice nagging me that whatever I'm writing is just going to be mercilessly binned by those Newsjack people.

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The number of writers for any given episode is around the 24/25 mark.

I get the impression that at least 2 or 3 of these are staff writers.

And 1 or 2 are probably senior management at the BBC who pop in and say "My son thought of a great joke for your show" (That's how I explain the handful of Voxpops that are dire)

So...that leaves about 20 chances each week to get on the show. I read somewhere (or, more likely, was dreaming about Newsjack again) that they get up to 800 submissions a week.

Ignoring quality, and looking purely at the numbers, the chances of getting on could well be 1 in 40. So there's no need to take it personally.....

(But having said that...it feels like a good 25%-30% of the writers are all posting on this thread...so that means if you submit every week and post on this thread your chances become......1 in 10??)

I do like the idea of Alan Yentob turning up with some cray scrawled joke by his young son and sweating the script editor into using it.

Of course, where my 'Mathematics of Newsjack' goes totally wrong is when you have a poster such as MikeyJ getting on twice in one week.

That gives him a probability of 2 in 1...this can only explained by using parallel universes. One where he gets on twice, one where he doesn't get on at all, and one where he gets a voxpop on but the presenter's name is Giles Mupp.

Christ...only 6 hours to go and I'm still messing about on here.....

That's mine off for this week.

As I'm going on holiday on Thursday morning I'll have to spend the next two and a half weeks deluding myself that I may have got a cheeky vox pop in, instead of being put out of my mysery on Thursday night. Ah well.

I'm going to tomorrows show so I'll try remember as much as possible to give everyone early feedback

Myself and co-writer managed a grand total of f**k all this week. It's that fifth week lull. You know how it is.

I've not done a single vox pop or correction this week.