BBC Breakfast

From the little birds I talk with, people there would love to re-brand and make changes, the bottom line is getting budget to do anything full scale, and DQF and various cuts means for the longest time the logic of if it ain't broke don't fix it. There are some very talented people on the team at Breakfast, and I'm sure in time we'll see their efforts on screen even if it's only bit by bit.

Even in the last few years you can see more and more effort going into it in lots of subtle ways (notice the orange branded mic windshields, the breakfast logo all over that tent, the butty van etc, lots of subtle design which a few years ago would have simply been a logo on the back or some prompt cards and nothing more.

I like the menu it uses.

If you look at the opening video you can see the tent, the Butty Van, an Airstream trailer and what appears to be two scanners trucks 13-14 seconds in - one from Neon broadcast. And no SNG van unless it was the little white truck next to green van.




In the brief talkback between the studio and tent it seemed like there wasn't any satellite delay.

I imagine the Neon scanner truck - where all Piazza Cams are cut - which is then a source into SQ2 (the Breakfast Gallery) - that's certainly how Marr is done from Media City with Neon plugging directly into the BBC Circuits to get back to London - negating the need for a Sat Truck.

Neon are at the smaller end of the OB truck market - their (terrible) website shows that it does up to 12 cameras. It's probably got a bit of connectivity to/from the SQ2 gallery, but means they'll only need a couple of tielines each way rather than getting every camera and microphone in - along with the usual resources in the studio, there's probably more being used than the studio was designed for.

Using a scanner also means the plaza can rehearse segments without interrupting the usual flow of the programme.

You wouldn't use "wireholes" in that kind of situation - you'd just install decent connectivity (i.e. wall boxes or similar with SMPTE or other fibre, plus power and some copper), and indeed I believe there is reasonable connectivity from the Plaza area to Dock 10.

Which is great if you are in a Dock 10 gallery. Breakfast doesn't come from a Dock 10 gallery.

Breakfast comes from a BBC gallery in a different building (it uses the same studio and gallery as the main BBC regional news operation in Manchester). The BBC have a number of in-house studios and galleries in their own buildings next door to Dock 10. The BBC DO hire Dock 10 facilities for some shows (particularly the weekend sport shows like Match of the Day, Final Score and Football Focus), but the daily news and sport news stuff isn't Dock 10.

I suspect it would have been possible to have done the Big Breakfast show using a separate Dock 10 gallery - but it may have cost more than using a low-cost OB truck.




I think you are confusing the BBC studios and galleries with the Dock 10 studios and galleries that the BBC hire on a show-by-show basis? The BBC have their own faiclities, entirely independent of Dock 10.

There IS some connectivity between the two buildings, in particular to allow content to be shared between EVS systems, and there will be decent tielines to let BBC shows in Dock 10 control rooms access the BBC internal contribution circuit systems.

I'd imagine the Dock 10 set-up - like most multi-studio set-ups, as routers for each studio, plus a central router for incoming and outgoing sources and routing between studios. With some control software (like BNCS - which I suspect Dock 10 will be using) you can virtualise these routers to a degree - to remove the need to do multiple router operations to get from A-to-B.

Yes wallboxes was what I was thinking. I thought dock10 was overall responsible for the technical stuff for each studio and building within the premises. I thought I read that they had to change something's to the BBCs overall layout and workflow with regards the gallery.

Edit : Here's a link to a TVTechnology article discussing the links between MediaCity. They talk about how their galleries were setup for the BBC in mind with the monitor stacks upside down. There's mention of how the buildings are connected via a fiber WAN that feeds the dedicated BBC lines in and out of the entire center. The way it was written made me think that the entire thing was technically setup by the people at Dock10 to the BBC Spec.

Aah - there's a big difference between 'wireholes' (which are basically ducts you can run cables through) and wallboxes, which are permanent racks or cabinets that are pre-wired back to other areas (like a facilities patch area, router or other facility).

A 'wirehole' is basically an aperture you can run cables through (could be a cable flap, a bit of sealable drainpipe, a properly built cable duct etc.

A wallbox or similar will have cable connectivity neatly terminated with connectors you can simply plug in to.



I think you are assuming that Media City is a single operation. It's not - it's a property development more than anything. Dock 10 have moved into one building - which has studios and technical facilities. The BBC have moved into a couple of other buildings - and have also built in some smaller studios and facilities in there. (Confusingly some of the BBC facilities are run by an operation called 'The Farm' previously mainly known for post-produciton facilities)

Dock 10 run the facilities in the Dock 10 building. The BBC (and The Farm) run the facilities in the BBC building(s). BBC Breakfast (and BBC North West regional TV) and BBC Sport News all have facilities in the BBC building independent of Dock 10.

The BBC also have a deal with Dock 10 to rent larger studios in the Dock 10 operation for larger sports shows, as well as ad hoc deals for other shows.



More a case of building their galleries so that they were a good fit for the BBC shows that were going to hire some of them for a large chunk of the time. Lots of non-BBC shows have been made in 'BBC style' studios in London - so it wasn't as if building Dock 10 galleries to be a bit 'BBC-like' was a major barrier to non-BBC work. (And the reality is that the first iteration of Dock 10 galleries weren't that popular as they didn't quite 'get things right')

There are workflow issues that would need to be addressed for integrating the BBC Sport operation in the BBC buildings with the control rooms in the Dock 10 studios in the buildings next door - so that would have probably been some of what you'd read about. (EVS linking etc.)



I think you've jumped to a few conclusions and made a few assumptions that aren't actually stated in that article. Just because Dock 10 (as it is now known - it was previously known as other things) have built studios to a BBC-style spec, as the BBC were a primary customer (and co-siting at the same time) it doesn't mean that all the studios in Media City that the BBC use are owned and run by Dock 10.

It's also worth remembering that news studios (like Breakfast use) are not standard production studios - and are heavily engineered around just doing news shows. Dock10 run general production studios - which are increasingly very different types of operations.

There were plans for the BBC to be able to use their own (non-Dock 10) galleries to control Dock 10 studios - but I don't know if these have ever been actually deployed in anger (or even implemented).

There is very good connectivity between the buildings in terms of OS connectivity and high speed networking.

Thank you. I learn something here everyday and how different things seem to be between the UK and US.

Presumably if this hasn't been implemented it would make it more challenging to handle any larger scale changes to the Breakfast/NWT studio that required them to move out for the duration - especially considering the automation used and the integration with newsroom studios.

Presumably the same challenges would apply between using The One Show studio for news programmes.

Yes - this is the reality of news production systems moving further and further away from 'general' production systems, you have two very different styles of gallery operation, and so moving to a temporary studio and/or gallery is trickier than perhaps it once was. This is the case particularly if the lower cost 'dedicated studio+gallery' model has been used rather than the costlier 'any studio can work into any gallery' approach has been taken.

Do we know what approach has been used in Salford? We know London is galleries tied to studios but less of an issue due to having multiple studios programmes can relocate there albeit maybe not ideal especially for some of the studio B programmes.