Rumour has it...

A little birdie told me something interesting today.

SMG don't actually own their own ENG truck. Or at least they do but are required to book it for use as it often gets rented out for other events.

It has apparently been booked out during the duration of the G8 summit in Gleneagles and will be up in the northern isles on a BOAT.

I hear that the newsroom people beleive that all they have to do is book the truck with a couple of days to spare, but they are likely to get a shock when they find it is pre-booked for a full 10 days.

So Scottish won't have an ENG truck for potentially one of the most rioteou moments in recent times? No OBs in the streets?

Ooops.

Can't they simply hire another one, OR as I would have assumed - they would own their own?!

Exactly.

There are loads of companies that hire out vans...

Solo, SNG, BBC Resources, SIS, Globecast, BT, etc etc etc...

SIS Link will be there on behalf of Sky. I know the camera man. They certainly don't have two of them in Scotland as the Glasgow plastics factory explosion was entirely missed on account of the SIS truck being in Ireland for the launch of Sky News there.

The point I was making is that the newsroom seem to be oblivious to the need to book far enough in advance. Its not as easy as you might expect to get a truck to Scotland with only a day of notice - as has been proved.

The ENG truck *is* owned by SMG resources, but like everyone else they rent their wares externally.

As we both well know, journos never think beyond their own noses. Trying to get a journo to think ahead is pretty much impossible.

But the G8 is a big event, and there will be loads of trucks from England heading north.

Indeed. That seems to be the consensus of the engineers.



Let's just hope that the local franchise doesn't look like the poor relation when other broadcasters have two-ways and OBs galore.

Due to the international nature of the G8 summit, I'm guessing that there will be lots of international broadcasters there.

Will they have their own equipment or would they hire UK equipment?

SISLink have plenty of trucks all over the UK. They will just send another one up there a few days before, same as everyone else. I take the original point of irony regarding SMG, though.

Do not worry, GRAMPIAN will definitely be there, covering this major story in THEIR transmission area.

The newsroom have had their G8 coverage planned for a while now but the problem was elsewhere I think. Scotland Today is the biggest user of the STV SNG truck however the truck itself (as well as cameras, studio crews etc) are all under the STV resources department and somebody made a cock up when it was booked to be in the Shetland Islands during the G8 summit. It's been sorted out and Scotland Today will definitely be presented from Gleneagles from the Tuesday until the Friday. They're hiring SNG facilities at Gleneagles, the Grampian SNG will be at Auchterarder, the STV SNG truck will be following protests and the ITN SNG truck will also be around somewhere.

Will Shereen anchor from Gleneagles, or do we have another, new mainstream anchor these days??

Yes STV need to be reminded of that