BBC Olympic Breakfast

Yes - HD from an old condemned council flat! Good game!

The basic principle was on BBC1 HD to maintain and replay all HD material where possible.

So to achieve that:
Lund Point Studio 1 was fully HD.
It also had HD replay via 3 Raven's and the capability of live playing from the IBC HD edit suites in the Olympic Park.
TC4 was the HD TVC main gallery - with Lund Point as a source, and HD Raven for playing titles.
All SD replay was via N6 (which arrived up-converted into HD)
All lower thirds where fired by N6 and arrived up-converted and keyed on in TC4.
Wherever possible Newsgathering (John Kay for example) edited and delivered to Lund Point MCR in HD via file transfer, it never touched TVC!

So for all BBC1 Bulletins for 2.5 weeks - we had 3 galleries and 3 directors - it was truly bonkers.

[cue lots of people posting ideas on how it could have been done better/simpler]

but where's the fun in doing it simply?

I think I only got to visit Lund Point once. Because of tight production timescales, much of the technical kit was installed before a hole was cut in a concrete wall to provide access to the rooftop studio, and (predictably), spread dust everywhere. I'd been helping with the inter-site connectivity, so was sent up there to vacuum out the fibre transmit/receive kit. The glamour of television, eh?

There's a great selection of photos on Nick Garrod's flickr stream: https://www.flickr.com/photos/belowred/albums/72157631505092238

As an aside, the first test of the circuits from there was when the tower was used as a radio receive point for Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, which was on the other side of the Olympic Park in Hackney Marshes.

There's a gallery floating around on t'internet with a fascinating BTS look at the BBC tower block.

http://dl1.isnd.co.uk/tvf/bbclundpoint.png

Certainly do echo the comments as above, pretty amazing to see a tower block transformed into a media centre. Love the miles of gaffa tape holding together the aircon ducts.

BBC's 2012 coverage was amazing, and what they did to tranform the few upper floors of a tower block were quite remarkable, as was said at the time.

My motto is "If you can't fix it with gaffa tape, you haven't used enough"

It is this sort of technical knowledge, skill and work that goes on behind the scenes that shows just have important and how bloody well lucky we are in this country to have the BBC.

Long live Auntie and all who sail in her!

Meanwhile in the United States, a duct tape and WD-40 story: http://wd40.com/cool-stuff/myths-legends-fun-facts


Okay, I have gone too far...

So it's the former secondary stand up positions that used the plate glass window studio that can still be seen today half way down the block?

I remember the region's anchored a day's bulletins from there, the day picked was seemingly at random and presumably on a rota two or three regions each day. (Recall for Look North it was Christa Ackroyd hosting)

I'm not sure if this has been shared yet. A tour of the BBC's home at the Olympics...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-36947013?SThisFB

I'm assuming that's where BBC News will be based, rather than the main coverage?

The reporter said it was the base for BBC WORLD News and 'other broadcasters'. My guess is it'll also be used for BBC domestic news.