The Sport Thread

No arrows pointing to them, but the two dark blue points on the map are BT/Timeline in Stratford and Red Bee in White City.

I think the MCR at Timeline in Stratford is being remotely controlled from home. Not sure whether Timeline in Ealing is also being remotely controlled.

AIUI some of this remote production is using Timeline's Ealing Studios facilities rather than their Stratford facilities. I don't know what the split is between Ealing and Stratford.

As others have said - the playout channel control is at Red Bee in White City (at the BBC Broadcast Centre I believe). I believe they still have staff working on-site.

There are core teams (working seperately) in both Ealing and Stratford, but the majority of kit is remotely controlled from others homes.

These shows have been really slick, and as mentioned yesterday's was the first they'd done live. It's very impressive and in among the chat and archive stuff they're also doing a nice little feature called Team Talk where one of the pundits phones up a fan of their former club who's either isolating or working for the NHS to thank them for what they're doing and talk about their memories, which makes for entertaining viewing. As mentioned, they're also doing a similar show for Scottish football which is particularly impressive given they're just about to lose the rights.

Meanwhile yesterday's Football Focus, albeit only half an hour long, consisted of all-new material rather than just repeats of old features as has been the case in recent weeks. It was presented from Dan Walker's house and much of it was interviews and features, but they also showed the 1999/2000 Goal of the Season for a bit of fun. Nice to hear the Pizzicato Five music again, and you could tell it came from an era before the Premier League provided proper photos and videos of all players as some of the player pics looked they'd come off CCTV.

And what with the World Cup Rewind (with David Icke on Denmark vs Uruguay from 1986), Challenge Cup Classics and Match Of Their Day being all new productions, there was as much new stuff from BBC Sport on Saturday as you'd get on an average weekend. Amazing how much effort they're putting in to keeping something on air.

E Grand Prix seeming a lot more organised this time around, proper social distancing in the studio too.

I think the one out west might be Timeline in Ealing. Here East is obscured slightly by someone who lives close to work!

Today's MotoGP programme also had a contribution from Suzi Perry at home in France, and a little bit of archive of her from a race old enough to have been on the BBC.

another one bites the dust ....

The Open 2020 cancelled as a result of coronavirus pandemic https://t.co/EGQ9ts6cZc

— Guardian sport (@guardian_sport) April 6, 2020

Just seen the news of the death of Peter walker

Without looking at the article, I guess this means that St. Andrews will host in 2022, which will be the 150th staging of the tournament.

Just wanted to also say, the virtual Grand National, which was shown on Saturday past on ITV, raised £2.6million for NHS charities.

And yet the Premier League are still acting like they can resume at the beginning of June.

I think it’s sensible for the Premier League to keep the option open. If the situation is looking a lot better then, they can go ahead if it’s not improving they can always just cancel again.

For international competitions its much more difficult to keep options open like that though.

To me it's clear that the START of the RESTART of the Premier League will be behind closed doors. Germany's Bundesliga has restarted training today in small groups. so if the timeline is on a par, we could see similar in England and Scotland by early May, ramping up to a restart say on the weekend of 6th June 2020. Depending on the advice the Government has, limited supporter access could be given say to Season Ticket holders on a ballot basis in early July. I'm not envisaging full stadia for any fixture in the remainder of 2019-20.