It's just that I thought Sky had put out publicity talking of future programmes from studio B- it strikes me that entirely virtual programmes (rather than segments) are very dated and entirely out of keeping with the very real Sky News relaunch.
This is why I had always thought of Studio B as being an actual set up studio space for programming, rather than a VR set.
Most VR on Sky seems to be done using the "floormap" thing in front of the newswall anyway.
Thing is, News 24 now tends to break a lot of BBC-Regions-Fed stuff, that Sky won't even mention. Things about local court cases and city councils, that don't particularly have a national relevance.
When it comes to major breaking news, I'd maintain that Sky are still well ahead in breaking it (if not always covering it):
Amman blasts - Sky had the report up about five minutes before the Beeb, despite the BBC having a reporter there
The July 21st and 7th bombings. On the 7th, News 24 were so unsure about it that they put a breaking news strap up with no other text, took it down, then about seven minutes later put it up again with the news.
Arafat and the Pope dying - now, alright, that wasn't any news channel's finest hour, and the BBC weren't quite as bad as Sky with the reports, but they did flash up a fair few inaccurate ones as well. But when the final news came, again, Sky were ahead.
War in Iraq breaking out - took the BBC forever with this one
September 11th... and so on
When it comes to fairly small and local stories in the UK, I would say the BBC were ahead some of the time. They should be ahead all of the time, given their massive local base. But when massive national/international stories break, I still think News 24 spend more time thinking about how to cover it rather than actually covering it. They're still too timid.
Surely you wouldn't call an empty space (a VR studio) studio B?
Dunno why not - if it has cameras, a lighting grid, a production gallery etc. then it is still a studio. A studio doesn't cease to become a studio because it doesn't have a permanent set rigged within it. After all most of the studios at TV Centre are empty for at least some of the time each week - and many of them don't have fixed sets.
Studio B is currently a "4 waller" or an empty stage, it has minimal lights, no gallery or cameras to speak of. It's not expected to be fully commissioned for a year.
Something that article doesn't mention is that the Cardiff University study was based on two weeks in July 2004, the number of breaking news stories on Sky being just nine, and it was commissioned by the BBC.
I'm sure a couple of the findings might be correct, but really you can make statistics out of anything.
From what I saw of it, it was just the corona of Earth that was yellow. Doesn't look drastically different, but a bit more 'morningy', rather than the cold blue all the time.
News 24 well ahead of Sky with the latest hostage video from Iraq (in fact Sky still haven't shown it, a good 10 minutes after News 24 first aired it). Also have the security correspondent in the studio, and a friend of the hostage on the phone.
Sky News broke the story about a minute before News 24 but have not shown the video, prefering to talk about sport, have an ad brea, do the headlines & weather, and now gone into the nuclear story.
Why are Sky so slow on this one?
EDIT: Sky now showing video - getting on for 20 minutes after News 24.
