BBC News Rebrand - This Monday

That's what they said about N24 opting out of the nationals but look at the condemnation that idea has received.

It seems to me that all sorts of flexibility with the bulletins is being lost.

Without a doubt - but if you have to make savings of the magnitude BBC News are having to, you have to make trade offs like this.

here is another idea...

http://www.rp-network.com/tvforum/uploads/n6layout.jpg

Not that's something different. I like it.

How would it work when Nationals have to reherse?

I know it sounds stupid, but wouldn't it make sense for all nationals to come from TC7 and half share the studio as they are at the moment.
Surely they can share the studio for rehersal purposes.
How much rehersal do they do on set?

Ugh, can we end this chain of thought of rehearsing nationals in one half of a studio while the other half is on air? Rehearsals are quite often mostly for the benefit of the gallery which would be transmitting stuff for a live programme, therefore unable to rehearse anything.

Why do they need to rehearse anyway? News 24 don't rehearse - and yes sometimes it shows, but this adds to the feel of live news, something that wouldn't go amiss during the bulletins.

Don't forget that Workin Lunch and The One are on at the same time making TC7 unavailable. Which is why they have been in N8 these past few weeks.

I know this may show my naiveity but how come all these various galleries of news studios aren't all linked to a computer network for storing all the various astons/graphics etc so that when they have to move elsewhere the gallery can access their astons and graphics on the network.
Mind you having the one come from N8 seems to have one advantage for deaf veiwers, all Astons are now appearing under the signer and not on the screen where because of BBCs Align Right policy, the signer sometimes obscures the name.

Presumably because there's more blocking involved with bulletins - aligning shots so that story graphics are in the right place and not behind someone's head, knowing where to look for a two-way etc. etc.

There is a degree of networking for astons and graphics these days - and different galleries have access to the same graphics boxes by routing. Similarly name captions are typed into an ENPS script in a standard(ish) manner and can be played out in the same or different styles depending upon which studio you are in.

A script for astons for a Six O'Clock News package will playout with Nationals graphics from a studio working in Nationals style, but the same script will generate News 24 or World style astons if used in a studio setup for that. No editing of the script is needed.

Similarly the journalists do exactly the same thing creating their Viz graphics in the newsroom irrespective of which studio they are working in - the same graphics will work in multiple areas.

News 24 does very basic formulaic stuff, with the odd exceptions.

National bulletins are more ambitious - and rehearsal is needed for this. Even the headline sequences, with bongs in some places but not others (in theory the bong separates the stories from each other), up sound (which when News 24 use it in their headlines often goes wrong as a result of a lack of rehearsal) etc.

As others have stated, with the greater use of screens and graphics, and more live graphics with reporter interaction, including camera moves and clips of VT, rehearsal is required. News 24 doesn't have camera operators moving cameras around on the floor - and doesn't have to rehearse camera moves because it only does very basic ones that don't relate to elements in the studio. News 24 doesn't have a lighting director or vision operator, so there is no issue about optimising the lighting for each sequence - it is a fixed plot that is hugely compromised. Nationals do big screens with multiple graphics sources, VT clips, graphics that a reporter needs to be aware of and interact with etc., and the vision mixer and sound supervisor, as well as the lighting director and camera operator (s) need to know what is going on. Doing this without rehearsal can look very eggy...

All this talk of splitting studios in half for rehearsal is all very good - but the only studio at TV Centre that has done that historically is the sport studio - which also has two galleries... Until the current set they had two set areas (now they only have one - so use a separate studio for occasions when they need two studios at once) with a thick sound-deadening drape that would separate the two sets, allowing each to work into its own gallery.

News don't have any dual gallery studios - and neither do they have two sets that could be acoustically separated.

So basically noggin you're saying that rehearsal is vital for the nationals - so how are they going to manage when News 24 is in N6?

EDIT: Ah - perhaps I've got it, and perhaps got the reason why the 6 is the only bulletin not to come from N6 - are News 24 going to run back half hour programmes at 12.30 and 21.30 to allow prep in N6? They can't run one at 17.30 as that's the Huws hour.