South West England & CI Thread

I think it's just to add a bit of visual variety to a story that's not visual, rather than have just a whole item done from the studio. These days of course it cuts down the number of people in the studios

It could well be that the reporter and crew were filming in Bath or surroundings anyway. Could well be that they were sent out there and the plans for the item changed

I remember a few occasions in regional news when a sat truck and crew was sent out for a pointless live, or just to a nice location for the weather just because they had nothing else to go to. The sat truck was available and paid for as were the crew, they'd only be sitting around the office so they may as well send them out.

That's all super, and perfectly reasonable, but 99% of viewers are not savvy enough (and why should they be? ) to realise that, and will possibly interpret it as just a pointless money wasting jolly.

I think 99% of viewers understand that the BBC will have staff and resources available, and already paid for, that they can deploy at will. Seeing a report from their local area gives them a greater sense of connection. .....at least that's the view of BBC England management who want to make that kind of thing a priority in their new plan.

Having said that I think there are many regional BBC lives, especially in late bulletins, that are unwarranted. With a slimmed down operation they may have to consider those a luxury. The new plan for all regions to have facilities for 2 or 3 lives at 18.30 and one at 22.30 might not be easily achievable unless the daytime newsgathering is heavily cut back.

No way will it be as high as 99%,

They usualy get read from the roof of the studio!

Do zoom calls count as Lives?

The additional facilities you're talking about could be something like LiveU rather than additional SNG and VSat vehicles which would also give the ability to any of their journos to go live from their phones, possibly something the existing self shoot videojournalists could exploit easily?

Yes, Zoom calls could count as lives but they only work well for simple straight to camera ones, and often are used currently because a crew can't be sent. The quality is not always great.

The BBC regions already make extensive use of WMT technology (same as LiveU) and have largely switched way from SNG and VSATs for most lives.

Reporters doing lives from home during lockdown have had access to a WMT iPhone app but using that on a busy street on their own would be asking for trouble.

The problem is the new BBC England template that decrees most regions will in future only have 3 or 4 crews available each day. If one of those has to be available for a possible 22.30 live and perhaps two available for 18.30 lives then the shooting and editing that happens earlier during the day on location will be under pressure.

Presumably one thing that will be lost in some regions is weathe bring presented on location on a regular basis?

WMT cellular units certainly bond over multiple cellular connections (I think 4-8 SIMs and Modems, plus WiFi and/or Ethernet cable) is the standard config. I don't know if they bond cellular and WiFi (allowing dual Cellular if you use a MiFi) on their iPhone app.

https://www.mobileviewpoint.com/products/mobile-encoders/agile-airlink

I believe they do a similar retransmission/error correction process as other video transfer systems like SRT - where you decide latency (and buffer duration) to mitigate transport disruption.

Other than for a breaking evening story I don't really see the need for any lives on the late night bulletin. It's lunchtime where they are often most useful where a reporter may be on location but yet to file a full report.

Once in a blue moon there's an evening council planning meeting, that is deciding something of important local interest. In those cases, it's quite opportune timing. Otherwise, what's the point of standing outside a building that has its lights off, and been unoccupied since 5:30pm (or these days, March 23rd 2020)

Pan-regional first 5 minutes of tonight's ITV News West Country, discussing post-lockdown restriction tiers.

Sadly, the improved design of CGI gallery/newsroom backdrop that was introduced earlier this year wasn't used. Rather, they'd reverted to the previous design, complete with its appallingly fake looking red "On Air" light in the middle screen.