BBC National News: Presentation

I suspect most regions still opt-out by having the network incoming feed on the vision and sound mixers prior to the opt - so Stewart would have seen (and heard) the network promo on his normal studio output monitoring system (I.e. floor monitor and studio foldback speakers)

At one point, when analogue and digital opts both happened simultaneously (plus or minus the relative delays) - there was some complex red-light triggering for the digital opt-switch, but I'm not sure if this is still the case now there is only one network feed (digital) to opt-out of not two (digital and analogue).

Thanks noggin

Is there a technical reason why the News bulletin captions from TVC haven't been changed to match the new style broadcast on Sundays on Marr & Sunday Politics, or why the NBH captions didn't stay as the TVC style until the rest of BBC News moved over?

I'm guessing the Breakfast captions didn't change, as the regional news ones didn't change either?

Are there plans to change the Breakfast & regional news captions to match the NBH ones at a later date?

Can the regions & nations replicate the NBH style captions?

(Is it 'captions' or 'astons'?)

Also - the Daily Politics astons are the NBH style, but it's from Millbank!

To match the Sunday politics look now it's moved to NBH surely?

Yes, I believe it's now the case that all centres "soft-opt" - in other words a few moments before the opt they put network sound and vision through their galleries, go "into circuit" and at the moment the opt is called by London (or Salford in the case of Breakfast) they cut away to local sound and vision. Everyone hears and sees what happens on the network around the opts, so that's why some presenters will react to what's been on before them. Stuart Norval in Southampton often used to pass an amusing comment on what had just been on breakfast before the early opts! Now that there's just one network feed, appropriately delayed, regions can also mix or fade to/from black to go in and out of network (though a lot just stick with cuts I've noticed!). Mixing back to network's title sequence after the regional headlines works very well IMO. For a very long time while there was a separate analogue and digital network feed you could only mix on analogue so it's become habit for most directors to cut...!

Presumably this now paves the way, for local tickers and captions to be keyed onto network pictures, or even local audio only voice overs ? Useful for CiN etc, but also any local/regional difficulties ?

Yes - Midlands Today did this for their Child Rescue Alert captions in 2006/7

Here's a cap from BBC South East's version
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42298000/jpg/_42298852_cra_203.jpg

The problem back then, before analogue switch off, was that the captions would often only go out on analogue (as the digital opt-switch wasn't fired as the network source still had a tally on the vision mixer, and that was what fired the digital opt-switch with the matched delay) OR if you had a secondary network source (as some regions did to force a digital opt with network on the desk) you'd end up with soft 14:9 pillarboxed network sources on the 16:9 digital network (as the analogue network 'leaked' onto digital)

That's really interesting, cheers noggin!

So what's the state of play today, given I understand some regions still have the analogue opt thing working but it just gets nowhere due to transmitters being powered down?

Is there not a region that opts out even earlier, and have the national presenter on their studio screen saying ' Time for the news where you are' and then the regional presenter says 'Thank you' and launches into their programme?

Midlands Today used to use that hideous format. Fortunately it's since been dropped.