ITV News

If you wanted to do this, it'd probably be much easier on everyone to mount some HD cameras on the roof of TLS, and recreate the studio virtually at GIR.

Just out of interest, how is Channel 5 News proposed to operate when it leaves for its new studio at Northern & Shell (if they ever get round to building it)? Or is that currently operating separately to ITV News/London Tonight/Channel 4 News anyway so it will be minimal disruption?

It could probably be done but would be a logistical nightmare, incurring many unnecessary costs without actually adding anything to the programme other than a nice view that would plunge the studio into darkness for 6 months of the year during the 6.30pm news and 9 months of the year at 10pm. Where have we seen that before?

Yes, currently Channel 5 News is pretty much ringfenced from the other ITN productions. It has its own director, Ben Wickham, and I know it has its own sound mixer who was hired specifically for C5. She doesn't tend to do any of the ITV or Channel 4 bulletins (I think she did one or two a couple of months ago but certainly not as a matter of course) and the ITN sound mixers don't usually do C5 News, unless in an emergency. As far as I know, it is intended that when Channel 5 eventually moves (although I think it will be quite a while off) it will have its own gallery at the new facility and its staff would probably be based there. I think it will just be using ITN newsgathering resources etc.

Having a real live studio window might be alright, in fact i think having a more 'natural' (if thats the word) would be good with a mixture of the virtual stuff. But like you say for about half the year, the 1:30 news would be the only programme having a daytime shot. The 5:30am/ 10pm especially are only light for short periods of the year (the latter especially).

With it being virtual you can rewind the video to earlier in the day if needed, theres no need too say they have a 'LIVE' view?

But it wouldn't be virtual if your moving to TLS 7 you idiot! Remember you original point, I then suggested a mixture not of the view but story related images, live links etc. And how stupid would that be having an afternoon bright sunshine backdrop for the 5:30 or NaT
'Hello and welcome to news at ten, yes it is ten clock and dark outside we just recorded this backdrop at 3 this afternoon because Daniel K, suggested it'

It was suggested that TLS 7 was recreated virtually, so you could rewing the backdrop a small bit so there is a small bit of light .

I think this is a good idea on paper, but in principle it can't really work, and remember Staff often work for more than one programme. ie Faye and Charlene Usaully do the London late news from the LT studio, the overnight headlines/ the news at 5:30 both from the main ITV News studio and then the London Daybreak news (Untill recently) from the London studio- in the case of London Daybreak opts they could come from (as it does now) the itv news studio, but the late bulletin and news at ten only have the weather forecast in between literally a minute or so, it would be a bit if rush. And Nina Hossain often does the 1:30 news and LT, so she would need to travel between the two as does Faye and Charlene at weekends.

with LT and ITV News merging into one studio, probably after Daybreak leaves 7, they can recreate it and have LT at one end of virtual 7 and ITV news at the other end, but because it is virtual they can just turn the virtual 'model' around so it is LT's area instead of ITV News

Maybe you haven't been watching long enough, but you do realise that ITV News did indeed have skyline backdrops in its virtual environment in 2008 and 2009? In fact, it looked pretty damn good; certainly the best backdrop I've ever seen on TV news. And the advantage of it not being a live shot was that they didn't need to worry about rain on the camera etc. Of course, having a live camera shot would be possible as ITV London have one, but it sort of defeats the object of getting rid of the original skylines because they were too London-centric.

ITV News will never have a real window backdrop as long as it remains at Gray's Inn Road. Firstly, the only proper, original TV studios at ITN are in the basement (the rest are converted office space) and secondly even if they did have a window, they wouldn't look out on much from ITN's position. If anything, I'd rather have ITV News move back to an atrium-side studio, as it was during the 1990s. The only such studio at the moment belongs to London Tonight, and since 2006 they've stupidly had the curtain drawn over and don't utilise the atrium anymore.

Such discussions are academic anyway. It's almost certain that ITV will retain a virtual environment in the future. The flexibility of Studio 2 is so great that they can pretty much create whatever look they want. Just look how easily it has been changed for election programming over the past few years. If it was a real set in there, it would have been much more costly and impractical to change it. Having said that, though, I do hope for a return to a real set one day. They look much better onscreen.

You still haven't answered my point from a few days ago about the logistical nightmare of relocating ITV News to TLS whilst still maintaining links with ITN. Not only do the 'talent' work on different programmes on the same day, so do many, many technical staff. Having them flit from here to there across London would be horrendous. I can tell you now that when the power went off at GIR just before News at Ten in 2010, it was a nightmare when the team had to make their own way to Millbank. Or are you suggesting that ITN gets dumped and the whole operation moves in-house to ITV? I wouldn't like to see that day ever come, as it would mean the end of ITN. That would be one hell of a sad day for television just so you can have a window on the news

Woa hold on there, Rob, fantasy update: we've long since moved onto the creation of a virtual TLS 7 model in Studio 2 designed for both ITV News and LT to share, complete with a time-delayed "window" so it can be daytime all the time.

Aha. Something tells me Mr K isn't taking the TLS 7 abandonment well.