BBC London TV News

Tonights BBC London failure, after one of the reports on the late news, no sound in the studio, a BBC1 strap appeared stating the programme would continue with pictures only. Then cut abruptly to the pre recorded weather, then ended with a sting.

The programme has become a shadow of itself, its been blighted by technical problems for months, and the move from MHS has not alleviated this.

Good job no one else wents tits up tonight because London couldn't have helped out on this occasion.

Did they actually abandon the bulletin then?

It's inevitable in a new studio that they'll have at least one total failure in the early days - MHS did.

However BBC London does seem to have a lot fewer technical problems since they moved into Broadcasting House. The technology at MHS was really showing it's age towards the end

No they did not abandon it, the message that flashed up was on a strap across the lower 1/3 of the screen.



I'd argue they have just as many problems at BH as they did at MHS, every time I tune in something seems to go wrong, be it reports failing, the screen on the left packing up, graphics messing about, or reports that seemingly lose sound, or are cut together appallingly that give the impression they are jumping about. The headline sequence on the 6.30 bulletin often tends to get screwed up several times a week as well.

It's a shame because its spoiling the programme which has improved slightly content wise recently.

It sounds like the digital sound desk might have crashed, which is something that has blighted most broadcasters at one time - This Morning limped off air so they could reboot not long ago, Radio 1 has to swap studio because the desk has gone nuts fairly regularly.

The problems do seem to have increased since the first week or two when I didn't see anything go wrong.

Indeed, it's fairly common - Sky News' sound desk went kaput the other week too

Probably the one bit of broadcast kit that hasn't got more reliable in digital form - analogue desks can't crash (they had one at MHS)

And you always knew where you were with an analogue desk. A quick glance up and down the channel told you everything, instead of having to go through layers of menus to try and find an odd EQ or group setting that had been left on a channel. This, coupled with 'Load Defaults' buttons that occaisionally didn't, means that when something has started to go wrong it's often not obvious what's happening.

At least the powers that be have got the message that the current desks are not popular, and Studer will be supplying Salford Quay and the new Broadcasting House instead. Time will tell if they prove to be any more reliable or user friendly.

I do quite a lot of work on the Soundcraft Vi6 (live music as opposed to broadcast though), which is based on the Studer software (and a lot of the hardware - about the only difference is Soundcraft designed the console (but based on Studer designs), and supplied the pre-amps), and they're great! Each screen has half touch screen, which always shows the settings for the channel below, and a control section, which changes depending on what you select above. If nothing's selected, then each channel strip has exactly the same controls, like an analogue desk.

http://home.vis-is.co.uk/data/grabs/soundcraftvi6.jpg

On this morning it happened during a serious interview and you could hear Phil and Fern apologising to the guests as they went off air:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TV7UGC7LOU

The Law According to Sod dictates that equipment failures always happen at the least convenient and appropriate times.

However the only convenient time is when they're not being used.... and they're not very likely to go wrong when you're not using them!