BBC News - General

Surely at the time of the network bulletins the other studio will always be free?

As I've said all along you simply need an old fashioned microphone to talk over live or relevant pictures with appropriate astons whilst the network programme finishes. A single fixed camera in a broom-cupboard (remember the old CBBC!) would suffice for the ?10-15 occasions it is required per annum.

With what crew?

Well they have crew now, why won't they have them when they're both in N6?

Anyway News 24 will still be in N8 from the end of January won't they, N6 won't be ready for them for a while yet.

Err - you need a hell of a lot more than that. You would need a vision mixer (probably with a DVE), a sound mixer, a separate gallery, a small studio or newsroom camera, ideally autocue (though the presenter could operate), some server playin (so that you can show recorded material), and some graphics, some outside sources to get the live pictures in, and some means of routing them. Effectively you need quite a lot more kit than a regional breakfast bulletin - pretty close to a full gallery, but without a multicamera studio.

And you'd need at least a producer and a director/vision mixer/sound mixer (and ideally a separate vision and sound mixer if you are really going to do breaking news coverage)

(CBBC in the broom cupboard in the 80s had a lot more than a microphone and a camera - it had a full presentation gallery, as well as the self op con position you could see. Yes Phil had a vision mixer - but that wasn't the main network mixer, there was still a director and a sound and vision mixer running all the VTs and cutting to them etc...)

Why do you need all this if you're just talking over live pictures?

Would the working lunch crew not be able to take over for a short while?

NO they are all on their way home. And the studio is in bits being rerigged and re lit for Hardtalk and Newsround. You could probably fire up a studio in 30 minutes or so, but if we are talking about spliting off from the one during the breaking news, then there is no chance

But today they didn't have any live pictures after about 10 minutes. And the presenters were doing far more than talking. They were dong lives scanning wires etc.

Because that requires a vision mixer to select the right source of live pictures - and go back to the presenter in-vision or recorded pictures when the live pictures disappear (or the link goes down). You need a sound mixer to mix the live sound from the pictures coming in with the presenters voice, incoming phone calls, reporter on the scene, guest from remote studio etc.

You need graphics on the screen, you need people to do all this.

You can't just put a live feed on screen for 30 minutes and forget about it. You can't just put a presenter mic live for 30 minutes and leave them to it.

Chances are though, if it's a sufficiently major (and developed) story to leave on live external pictures for 30 minutes, the nationals will be looking to take it to. Otherwise N24 could take the nationals feed, headlines and other major stories until at least the mid point summary before breaking away.

As I said the other day in the 're-brand' thread, a small second facility would be helpful. Provide a minimum of equipment that still allows N24 to opt out. A camera in the newsroom with stand up position to enable a head+shoulders shot. Do you really need to be able to take phone calls? If so, share that with the main gallery - admittedly you can't do different things at the same time, but it's fairly unlikely you'd want to. With the amount of equipment being replaced, most that would be needed for a tiny operation should be able to be reclaimed - it can't all be in that bad a condition.

There would already be someone looking after graphics, well, provided they keep the ticker on the N24 feed while simucasting. I would assume the producer / director of the nationals will not also produce / direct N24, freeing up the normal people for the duration of the simulcast. They should be able to op a tiny gallery with one presenter for up to 30 minutes.

Will there not need to be some second facility to handle the Interactive summaries and possibly the 8pm summary?

Just remembered that myself while cooking dinner (get me!), that couldn't N24 decamp to the interactive studio for the 30 minutes if they needed to break off the simulcast?