UK General Election

Except the times John Curtice was waiting on the balcony and they kept talking, on at least one occasion meaning we didn't hear from him.

Which 'enormous space' are you referring to?

Studio B? It's not enormous compared to ELS Studio D and doesn't have the associated infrastructure. There is a lot more technical infrastructure at Elstree than just the usual studio gallery and there are far more people working on the election programme than you see in the back of shot. NBH B has a standing set, in use for several hours every day, 6 days a week.

Or do you mean the newsroom? Where do you suggest you relocate the newsroom staff and infrastructure for the week of pre-election rehearsal/set up if you use the newsroom? How would you light it (it's got standard flourescent tubes and some led set dressing)? Where would you do the green screen stuff that's become integral of the programme? It might look like an office, but there's plenty of non-standard equipment on almost every desk. The knock on to news production for the week before and days after would be unworkable.

Elstree Studio D is a perfectly sensible location to do the election night programme. It's got the hub infrastructure required. It is offline, in the sense that it's use isn't connected to other news programmes from NBH. Therefore it can be set, rehearsed and derigged without affecting other news programmes (though it may have knock-ons for other Studio D bookings as it's a general purpose studio). The studio centre has scenery storage and handling etc, which NBH is limited in. Plus Studio D is very easily accessible as far as getting the set in and out is concerned, which NBH B isn't.

And I can't really see the election programme returning to TC1 either, given that technical facilities at TC aren't going to be anything like what they were. I doubt there'll be enough room in the remaining TC for the staff, technical infrastructure and associated requirements of the election programme.

Interesting that some people think that ITV 'won' by having multi millionaire ex-chancellor who has destroyed the lives of so many people ranged against an ex-chancellor who, the aforementioned, accused of destroying the economy. An election isn't entertainment, it isn't the X factor, its life and death for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people. What is needed is fair reporting from a trusted source which Murdoch's Sky certainly isn't & a commercial ITV aiming for the sensational headlines.

So you're saying ITV should have excluded him for political reasons? Ludicrous.

Yes I appreciate that the nations had their own programmes, my point was whether those programmes were taking the national bulletin from Studio E.

I'm not doubting you but it's worth mentioning that Studio juggling has been done in the past in US elections where sets are reconfigured and moved in, out, installed and tested around preexisting show schedules. I'm sure the set in Studio B could be moved in and out - the world shows could go out in C (as many do often), Victoria Derbyshire could move to The One Show studio as it's an airy show, and Newsnight could be replicated in A. I mention Studio B because it's the largest and some of the nations sets looked good. They could use A for Jeremy Vine.

Is the gallery in Elstree permanent or set up specifically or bespoke? If it's bespoke then it would be a real pain in the arse to coordinate technically based on what I've heard.

What sort of connectivity comes into BH - how many satellite signals it can receive, bonded cellular and internet pipes.

That being said I think it would be extremely difficult to pull off in BH. And apologies if this doesn't make sense as it's an "late night post".

What enormous space in W1? The BBC don't have any large studios in W1 - the biggest studio (Studio B) on the site is the same size as the 'small' studios at Television Centre (TC2, TC5, TC7) and has such a massively permanently installed set you'd have to work around it.

You'd be able to put Dimbleby at one end, Mishal at the other and Emily in the middle with a much smaller screen, and Jeremy would need to be scaled back (physically) and done from Studio A I guess in a much less ambitious manner.

However the amount of time needed to modify the studio infrastructure and rebuild the galleries to work in a different style, plus bring integrate the additional tech that wouldn't usually be used, is non-trivial, and you'd need to find temporary solutions for Derbyshire, BBC World News and Newsnight for a week or two to do this.

I think it probably is achievable IF they can find space to site a hub operation - and with the move to IP this hub need not really be on the W1 campus (though in reality it is much easier to manage a show if you are all on the same site)

However the bigger issue is where you'd build the hub, and where you'd sit all the production team working on the show (who are in-vision extras in the studio at Elstree). Now that BBC Studios have largely left W1, and moved back to W12, there would have been space to build a hub (though it would be hugely expensive to waste that amount of space in Central London - whereas Elstree has loads of free space in a lower cost part of 'London') However most of that has presumably been land-grabbed by World 2020 expansion?

The reality is that W1 was never planned as the BBC's ONLY studio centre - it was designed to do run-of-the-mill daily radio and TV news, and general radio production. There was never an aim for it to do Elections and general TV production. The One Show has squeezed in (largely by occupying a space originally planned to be the BBC shop, and converting areas planned for storage into a control room suite) but that was a compromise (gallery and studio are in different buildings...) When W1 was planned - the model was to do elections in TV Centre...

Anyone suggesting using the Newsroom space as a presentation area needs their bumps read. The issue with having the largest TV and radio newsroom in the world is that it is the largest TV and radio newsroom in the world... You can't move that functionality elsewhere to allow the space to be use for a different purpose - there is nowhere big enough to put it elsewhere in the building.

You can't say 'Oh - we've got an Electionn - Newsgathering, Radio and TV bulletins, BBC World Service News - would you awfully mind not working for a week?'

You're sure are you? Have you any idea how 'bolted to the floor' most of the BBC News studio sets are? They aren't set-strike sets, and the building isn't designed for set-strike operation. Whether it was a good idea or not - the studio sets are pretty immovable. Remember how long it took News to install the Barco sets in TV Centre. It took weeks of using a temporary studio set-up (which the BBC no longer really have available) to build them...


Derbyshire would be a squeeze in The One Show studio - and because The One Show doesn't use any of the newsroom systems, either they'd need to find a kludge to engineer it into a news gallery, or they'd need to totally change the production style of the show. BBC News would also have to pay to use the space - as it isn't owned by them, as well as pay for a full crew. And BBC Television (who own the studio) would need to be told they couldn't do any daytime shows - like Rip Off Britain Live - in there.



Yes - but you'd end up spending a lot of work getting existing programmes on-air - before you could even start rehearsing your actual show. And you've ignored the back-end requirement to hub the shows - which also takes a significant tech build and needs a decent amount of production space. Shows as big as the Election don't just use an existing gallery - they effectively have a very large editorial and technical operation upstream of the gallery co-ordinating OB contributions. This needs physically and technically to be built and integrated into the gallery. This isn't something you do the day before.


Gallery is a standard non-news production gallery usually used for entertainment shows (just like TC1 before it). Additional equipment is rigged in it for News, but the bulk of the 'Election specific' stuff is done in a purpose-built hub. This is a dedicated space which is re-built for each election (I think some gear is left installed but I may be wrong). This is far more important than the gallery. There was a dedicated space at TV Centre for the same functionality (albeit in SD)



BH receives very little satellite stuff AIUI - that is mainly downlinked off-site and routed over the BBC internal lines network (I may be wrong). Bonded 3G/4G stuff is integrated over the internet (as the SIMs just provide a connection between the bonding unit at the OB and the internet) and I believe the bonding servers are within BBC premises.

Reality is that downlink and IP stuff is not dependent on physical location as long as you are within the BBC network.



I think your biggest assumption is the ability to set/strike the NBH sets - they are NOT designed for it...

If you read the post you would understand.

And I'm not sure where the 'ITV won' story has come from, other than a BBC-phobic press?

BBC ratings were around 4.8m, ITV around 1.5m I think? By that measure Good Morning Britain is winning against Breakfast...

I agree 100% with you, but some of the TV debates do have the tenancy to have 'LE' style packaging built around them, the venue buildings lit up with lasers and coloured lights, coverage of the participants arriving and walking into the building, not quite on a red carpet, but not far off, all the backstage jounros in the so called 'spin room' can at times look like 'Ant'n'Dec' on BGT etc making their comments on the main event. Then of course the debates themselves that have confrontational moments, (and those are the bits shown afterwards over again).

I'm not convinced the debates really add a positive contribution to the election process. The media seem to think they do, but they would, wouldn't they ?

I think May's refusal to take part may have had an impact on the campaign this time.