BBC News Channel General Discussion

Awks.

The News at Five seems to be coming from a different green screen studio today with a static head shot only - the background is low resolution but the same as the usual newsroom shot used in Studio A. Huw was invisible for a few seconds at the 17:30 headlines summary!

No, it's a real studio. Huws' secret powers though obviously leaked on to screen on this occasion.

Probably 44D the awful BBC World Service virtual studio that is probably a worse set up than some BBC News School Reports'. Either that or Studio A is having a really bad day.

Is there any particular reason why on some of the desks in the central newsroom have two phones for each user that look a like but are different colored?

Also I'm not sure if this is the right place but does anyone have any pictures of the server rooms showing the various broadcasting gear in the racks? I always like seeing those types of photos.

I believe that desks with two phones are where a role is considered broadcast critical. I presume one handset will be on a SIP system and the secondary handsets that some have would be a more traditional PSTN based system.

I can imagine that for people like producers having coordinate resources being able to have simultaneous conversations with the reporter and satellite truck crew you are trying to get to the same place would be a useful thing to be able to do.

The two colours are to indicated that the phones are on two different telephony systems for resilience purposes. Most phones in the BBC are now on a VOIP system (these are usually the black phones), using the same network infrastructure as desktop computers. However to avoid a network outage removing all telephony, there are also some white phones which are connected to a separate phone exchange that use conventional telephony systems.

In any broadcast area you're likely to find phones on both systems (or in some cases just the white phones - as they are deemed more robust)

When the BBC only ran conventional PBX systems, you'd still find occasional DELs (Direct Exchange Lines) in critical areas, so that if the main exchange fell over, you could still make calls (and receive them if people had the right number to dial). More DELs were installed for the 1999/2000 Christmas and New Year period (they were green phones usually) to ensure any millennium bug issues were mitigated.

I've seen both Simon McCoy and Martine Croxall use humour really effectively. But, for me, this example hit the wrong note. It went on too long, especially after Olly Foster had gone off screen, and the exaggerated eye rolling left me feeling uncomfortable as a viewer. For me, it went too far for banter. But I guess forums like this wouldn't exist if we all agreed.

Was clearly tongue in cheek but rather unnecessary. Also far trickier to get away with such things without a co-presenter.

weirdly Martine looked and sounded a bit like Kay Burley there....except Kay's got much better timing on those sort of asides.

News channel takes the generic BBC World News bulletin for the 9pm hour with Alice. Not WNT or OS branded.