The Newsroom

No BBC London news?

(August 2010)

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BE
Ben Founding member
I'm not so sure N9 is as ready to go into action as all that anyway.
DE
denton
You would have thought that N10 could have presented a bulletin for London after finishing the National News and all other regions had opted away. The scripts would be in ENPS anyway, and if it was only BBC London's studio/gallery out of action... their HUB could've easily played the reports down the line to N10 either before or during the bulletin.
PE
Pete Founding member
You would have thought that N10 could have presented a bulletin for London after finishing the National News and all other regions had opted away. The scripts would be in ENPS anyway, and if it was only BBC London's studio/gallery out of action... their HUB could've easily played the reports down the line to N10 either before or during the bulletin.


Which one is N10 these days? I thought N10 was Liquid News's old studio.
IS
Inspector Sands
You would have thought that N10 could have presented a bulletin for London after finishing the National News and all other regions had opted away. The scripts would be in ENPS anyway, and if it was only BBC London's studio/gallery out of action... their HUB could've easily played the reports down the line to N10 either before or during the bulletin.

I'm sure it wouldn't be that simple, nothing ever is! Besides if they couldn't use the studio then their whole facility would have been out for an extended period, therefore no (or little) production taking place.

The main problem at lunchtime it seems is that they were on the verge of having to evacuate everyone. Nick Hancock (who's filling in for Danny Baker) did a lot about it at the beginning of his programme at 3:00. He was warned at lunchtime (during neighbours) that he would probably have to go elsewhere. By then they knew they could continue using the building.

I wonder how the Arabic and Persian Tv coped?
IS
Inspector Sands
David posted:
How much time would it have eaten up by adding the words 'due to a water leak' or even the dreaded 'due to technical problems' to the introduction just to make it clear that it wasn't a planed change and that London viewers would get their own region back later.

It's irrelevant to the viewer as to why. The opening line welcoming London viewers was quite enough and was more that most regions get when their regional news doesn't appear!

Quote:
I noticed that on both BBC One London and BBC One South East after Fiona Bruce introduced the regions there was a short pause as is the norm on BBC London to give the other regions the chance to opt. The ending of South East Today barely got to the end board before network played out a promo.

Would South East Today not opt at all when they are covering for BBC London? That would explain why they didn't jump in straight away and why they got cut off at the end if it was handled by network instead.

Yes, they wouldn't need to opt out as they would have been carried on the network and therefore would have been at the mercy of the network to get them on and off air and cut off if they over-ran.

I'm not up with the current arrangements but they might have opted their own region out anyway, either out of habit or for some other reason
BH
Bvsh Hovse
I wonder how the Arabic and Persian Tv coped?

Word went round Bush they were standing by to evac, but being further up Egton wing they were not directly affected.
DE
deejay
Pete posted:
You would have thought that N10 could have presented a bulletin for London after finishing the National News and all other regions had opted away. The scripts would be in ENPS anyway, and if it was only BBC London's studio/gallery out of action... their HUB could've easily played the reports down the line to N10 either before or during the bulletin.


Which one is N10 these days? I thought N10 was Liquid News's old studio.


N10 is the "Clip Studio" - a tiny single camera Chroma-Key set up that's used for Daytime BBC One summaries among other things.

I think you may be confusing what's known as N10 on the router with the two former news studios N1 and N2 which are now referred to as TC10 and TC11. TC10 was originally used by UK Play for the Phone Zone but is now used by CBBC for various productions. TC11 was the Liquid News studio from 2002 onwards. 60 Seconds news's set was also in TC11. When BBC Three's 7 o'Clock News ended, I believe 60 Seconds moved to the Clip Studio (N10) and TC11 was available generally again. I think Strictly It Takes Two comes from there, but I'm not sure what else...

Anwyay, back to BBC London's lack of appearance the other afternoon, it's always been the case that if London (or it's predecessor Elstree) wasn't available for a regional bulletin, Pres would take the next nearest region. Before the (old) BBC South East split in 2000 this was BBC South from Southampton, but is now generally BBC South East from Tunbridge Wells.
NG
noggin Founding member
David posted:
How much time would it have eaten up by adding the words 'due to a water leak' or even the dreaded 'due to technical problems' to the introduction just to make it clear that it wasn't a planed change and that London viewers would get their own region back later.

It's irrelevant to the viewer as to why. The opening line welcoming London viewers was quite enough and was more that most regions get when their regional news doesn't appear!

Quote:
I noticed that on both BBC One London and BBC One South East after Fiona Bruce introduced the regions there was a short pause as is the norm on BBC London to give the other regions the chance to opt. The ending of South East Today barely got to the end board before network played out a promo.

Would South East Today not opt at all when they are covering for BBC London? That would explain why they didn't jump in straight away and why they got cut off at the end if it was handled by network instead.

Yes, they wouldn't need to opt out as they would have been carried on the network and therefore would have been at the mercy of the network to get them on and off air and cut off if they over-ran.

I'm not up with the current arrangements but they might have opted their own region out anyway, either out of habit or for some other reason


I think it depends whether you're an "analogue" or a "digital" region as to whether you can opt-out or not, and if you're analogue whether you "hard opt" or "soft opt".

Analogue network is still ahead of digital by a little bit (a second or two I think) - so regions with remaining analogue transmitters will be using the analogue network as their master.

If they soft-opt (i.e. have analogue network on their main vision mixer, and switch the analogue transmitter to the vision mixer before the opt-point) then it would be tricky for them to be a network sustaining source - as network would need to wait for them to opt-out (or opt-away) from network before network could cut to them - otherwise there would be a network howl-round... (Network would cut to themselves delayed effectively and you'd get a horrible mess)

It was certainly the case that if you were the network sustaining source you DIDN'T soft-opt - and instead offered your first source to network (whether it was titles, live camera etc.) and they then cut to you and away from you. If you REALLY wanted to - you could then opt-out (i.e. switch the transmitter from network to your regional output) once they'd cut to you - and wait for them to cut away from you before you opted back.

Most main regions soft-opt on analogue - as it is cleaner than hard-opting (or crash-opting).
SP
Steve in Pudsey
I'd imagine that you would have wanted a damn good reason to opt out while you were the sustaining feed - until the mid 80's when synchronisers became common you would also have needed to genlock the local SPG to the incoming network feed (rather than advancing your syncs so your feed was synchronous to pres when it arrived there - probably via natlock, or was that a Lime Grove specific thing?). AIUI some pieces of kit, notably VT and telecine, would object to syncs being played with while they were on air.
IS
Inspector Sands
I'm sure BBC London occasionally used to opt out even though they were sustaining for various reasons*, although of course they never soft-opted

*IIRC to cover the ident before the programme - network got 'for your regional programme tune to analogue/press the red button'
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Probably made easier by the fact that the pres director at RedBee can see BBC London's output off-air and can wait until they're doing something that isn't going to howl?
IS
Inspector Sands
Probably made easier by the fact that the pres director at RedBee can see BBC London's output off-air and can wait until they're doing something that isn't going to howl?

It wouldn't 'howl' anyway as they've always crash (hard) opted, they can't do anything else

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