ITV News

The floor appears to have been replaced with some kind of laminate, looks ok, didn't it light up previously ?

I don't get the plasma, when they have that huge newswall to put images up on.

I don't understand that either. They look very cheap in that studio.

I don't think the panels look that good, they seem too "flat". When the camera is so close to the newswall, it kinda distors it. Now the blue seems a bit overdone.

The floor just looks like they haven't switched the lights on. More cost-cutting?

I know in 2004, on some press pictures/rehearsals that the floor is grey. I thought it looked better like that, just to tone the studio down a bit.

So they've changed the floor, which may look good, but they've added a plasma for what exact reason, as has been said, why can't they just put the images on the wall?

It would be better to go for a simpler studio design, though I suppose that would be budget restraints again

The floor seems less glassy thats all. Its more matte.

Perhaps the plasma screen will come into play properly when the promised tweaks eventually come into effect. When that will be is anybody's guess, though.

The article on MediaGuardian did seem to suggest there would be small changes, but they definitely haven't been seen fully on screen yet, because the OTT graphics are still there and the presenters are still standing up for a lot of the coverage.

I think the walk way should be removed and the desk repositioned. Perhaps subtler graphics can display on the video wall, and the plasma can be used for video links.

When you use chromakey in a studio the foreground image (i.e. the bit that you want that isn't green) is usually processed with a technique called "hue suppression" (or chroma fixing). This removes some of the chroma-key colour (green in the case of ITV News) from the remaining picture - and is used to avoid fringing effects (the halo that old CSO used to suffer from) and minimise any "spill" where the chroma key colour is reflected onto presenters skin, or on shiny surfaces like perspex desks etc. If you switch these techniques off you'd be surprised how bad chromakey can look... (Shades of 1970s Doctor Who...)

This hue suppression will also have the side effect of removing green elements from other areas of the studio - like an image in a plasma - so trying to incorporate a real plasma - especially with soccer or rugby images containing a green pitch - is quite a basic schoolboy error when it comes to working in a chromakey based studio.

I am surprised by the plasmas - but they do add an element of foreground interest in the studio - which has always suffered horrendously from appearing very flat and 2D because of the nature of the wall. It is also nice to have something real - though they do look like cheap plasmas on unicol stands.

I wonder if they are introducing them to allow less rehearsal time, and shows to be made with people less experienced in driving the complex wall systems. I hear that ITN has gone through another round of cost-cutting - so maybe they are simplifying to allow more multi-skilling (translates as de-skilling in most cases)

Like PAD says, how hard is it to ask the presenters to sit down from now on? It makes me think that they are either putting in place some more changes to the set, or they are just useless.

It just seems kind of pointless (IMO) that a huge plasma be brought into the studio when they payed a lot for the huge CSO set.

As for the floor, that's an improvement.

I don't think we have seen the changes that were heralded in the Guardian interview. Had it not been for that piece I suspect that the changes to the studio and a couple of the angles would have passed without comment (well, perhaps not without comment on here ).
Also, the plasma screen appeared to be shown for the purposes of that one shot. I don't expect it to become a regular part of the furniture.

A long standing bugbear of mine is that I think far too much is made of the fact that the presenters stand at certain points during the ITV News, (and there is a similar fuss regarding the BBC News for that matter). Usually they will only be seen standing at the start and end of the programme, and possibly either side of the commercial break, with walking limited to the walk back to the desk at the end of the programme. Hardly a whirlwind of activity.
It's not like Sky News where they make a feature of having presenters stride from one part of the studio to another.

I suspect that if the whole half-hour bulletin was to be presented from behind a desk, once it had been forgotten that that's what has been asked for in some quarters, people would comment on just how static and uninspiring an approach that is.