Radio Studio Design

The idea of seeing a still image of a radio studio updated every 30 minutes does seem a bit archaic from a 2019 point of view. But it was a neat bit of interactivity in the early 2000s when streaming video wasn't really available at a decent quality.

Here's the BBC's Domecam (or Domewatch according to the page title) where you could watch the Millenium Dome being developed, and even launch a floating window for your desktop!

Here are some 'highlights' of the Radio 1 webcam from 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20000511014142/http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/inside_r1/best_webcam2.shtml

Chris Moyles when he was at Radio One, and they were planning one of their 'Access All Areas' weeks said someone suggested taking the webcam idea one stage further and keeping the mics on whilst the tracks were playing, so everyone can listen to the on studio chatter...

Now, whilst that would be great fun for everyone who didnt work at Radio One, realistically, anyone who has spent even 1 minute in a radio studio 'on air' BBC or commercial radio, would know there are hundreds of reasons why it was in fact a staggering bad idea, and thankfully it never happened.

There was a time when one presenter was doing a running feature on the breakfast show presenter, where he would bring up some misdemeanour that had gone on. One of his sources (there were a few) was a feed of the main mic channel pre fader.
The more technically savvy early breakfast show presenter spotted it, and questioned why it was there, and was well aware of how dodgy it could be!

the radio 1 studio definitely looks the best. It's just less desperate than the other ones.

I remember when Moyles did some live video from the show back in the day, and one of the things that made it seem particularly odd, aside from the fact people stand quite away from each other when making radio, was the audio compression applied to the voices for radio just doesn't work when you're looking at video.

I know 5 Live has a continuous video feed of the current on air studio as the section on the BBCs intranet that has recordings of output has it alongside 5 Lives audio. The branding on Danny Baker's show always mentioned the '5 Live Webcam'.... but I don't think it's on their website at all. At one point his show was shown on the red button every Saturday.

Clips from the 5 Live 'webcam' feed do get used a lot. Quite interesting to see the big studios in Salford compared with the smarter multi purpose ones in BH and then the cupboard that Emma Barnet is sometimes in at Millbank

There used to be a link to a popout player of the live feed at the top of the 5 Live site, but it's been removed. You have to scroll down all the way to the bottom where it says 'Watch live: Inside the studios' and click play.

I don't know why that feed isn't in the iPlayer connected TV apps

Really like Talk Radio’s new studio, the backdrop is simple but effective. It comes to something when a radio station arguably has a nicer studio than any of the studios Sky News use!

Blimey, it's almost as if they don't want anyone to watch it

the Howard Stern was on TV some time in the late 90s/early 2000s, and the compression on his microphone was something else.

They did do that with Nick Grimshaw in 2014. The video seems to have been removed from YouTube now, but it was definitely there once upon a time.

Noticible on those programmes that are sometimes on the News Channel that are recorded in a radio studio, there was a business series done like this few years ago.

The audio is so different, much better, to what you get from a TV studio and it is quite odd at first