BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

In England at least there are not many universities that are more than a 30 minute train ride to the nearest BBC regional studio so it's really not too inconvenient to go and do your piece from there (media training 101 is that it's better to be in the same studio as the person who is interviewing you if possible).

DTLs tend to be used where an academic is commenting on something that is in the news; if it's a piece about their research that tends to be done as a VT package with a reporter and camera op visiting and filming a piece in the lab or similar.

Lancaster is somewhat geographically challenged being around 70 minutes away from Salford by train so I guess it makes sense for them to have some facilities. But for most other universities there is not a lot of point in going to the expense - and I suspect at the broadcaster's end they would prefer something linked by proper broadcast circuits rather than the public internet, even on a university JANET connection.

Incidentally I know that at the uni I work for our press office has an ISDN facility, but more often than not when I hear somebody do a radio contribution they have either jumped on a train to Leeds or it's done on the phone.

Historically, vision circuits were relativey expensive to lease, so for the occasional interview dtl it wasn't worth it. More affordable cctv type circuits are quite lousy quality wise (though that hasn't stopped the BBC using a few here and there). And there are plenty of places for academics to get to where there's a proper bbc or itv station. However costs are falling, and increasing numbers of live positions are coming into use, from banks, to big companies to some academic institutions. Plus all the time, Skype and FaceTime calls are getting better with improved broadband speeds. There may well come a time when almost all guests can appear in vision, where they might have been on the phone in the past, or delayed until they can get to a local radio or tv station.

If they didn't have a DTL position at Lancaster University I would expect they would have to travel to BBC Radio Lancashire in Blackburn, rather than to Salford. I think I read here once that all BBC local radio stations have such facilities (where they are not already co-located with regional TV news).

According to Lancaster Uni's Press Office page they have a small studio linked to the Press Association's Globelynx network, the same kind of thing you find in financial companies doing DTLs into financial news. https://www.pressassociation.com/pr-industry-monitoring/broadcast-services/

Durham University (nearest BBC LRs being Newcastle and Tees in Middlesborough) have one too as you can see here, image from the same PA website

Blackburn is still an hour away from Lancaster.

I'm not sure that all BBC local radio stations have TV studios, I've never seen a live from Radio York for example.

Not all do, no, but many have either a full camera set up or a feed point into which a crew camera which can be rigged given enough notice.

I can remember a good while ago (2005?) East Midlands Today did a report in Lincoln and then later the same day Look North Hull did an unrelated DTL interview from the same OB position. I would imagine the same sort of thing happens in a lot of places where there is an OB van available that might be preferred to a studio DTL position, especially on regional news programmes.

News at five coming from the Millbank studio. I think in previous years it has been presented either from outside at Westminster or the normal studio.

It seems that was only for Budget coverage, now back in C with Clive Myrie for the final 10 minutes of the programme.

I suspect you might be right, especially in these days when a lot of newsgathering is done from VSAT vehicles. It is probably not too difficult to allocate a vehicle that can go live without having to mess about rigging something that doesn't get used very often. Much like how the BBC used to park and SNG outside TV Centre rather than using the internal circuits, they used SNG contributions all the time so it was more straightforward (and saved money, perversely)

The BBC seemed to be the only one with a large budget for the coverage. ITV used standard titles, and standard set. Same for Sky News, but BBC had special graphics, titles, set and even on location sets.

*I see what you did there . . .

Actually, I think they just used the same (slightly amended) graphics as they use every year for the Budget/Autumn Statement.

I don't think there was any additional expense this year.

A second keyboard appeared at the desk in studio C at some point between 01:00 and the 01:41ish headlines.