Suitability of BBC regional studios

Since the return of 'Politics South West' they've shifted back to the soft area, which they previously used for 'Sunday Politics' - albeit with the purple chairs. It looks much better. When you've got a nice big studio, at least utilise it.



Edited to correct spelling of programme name . . . D'Oh!

That looks really nice and slick. Much better than South East

That's what happens when you have a 'proper' studio. Plymouth and Southampton still have real studios to work with, as does Newcastle. Bristol sort of does too.

Leeds, Hull, Birmingham, Tunbridge Wells, Norwich and Cambridge don't have proper studios and really come from office spaces that have been converted. You could argue Salford doesn't either. Not sure what Nottingham got when they moved in the late 90s/early 00s.

Hull has had its studio since April 2009 the 2004-2009 set was better. Norwich well they put a sofa in. Cambridge hasn’t been changed.

Studio or set? BBC Hull opened its television news studio and gallery in 2005, the set was installed in 2009 - what noggin is referring to is the fact that the newer builds tend not to have purpose built studios but repurposed meeting rooms and office space, with soundproofed walls.

Leeds, Hull, Birmingham, TW, Norwich, Salford and Cambridge are simply that, offices that are left bare, basic lighting grids installed and a tiny size (Birmingham started life as a conference room, as the beeb originally planned an LDN style Midlands Today programme)

It’s a massive oversight not to properly build studio spaces any more in my opinion. They always suffer from things like lack of height, lack of depth, lack of sound soak, too much rogue light (I’m looking at you The Mailbox), natural light in the wrong place (thinking about the original plans for Breakfast at Salford) or lack of access (for things like the set to go in).

Nottingham got a reasonable Tv studio and I think it was always designed to be a tv studio. It has decent height, access doors and is a good size for what they need.


Oxford was converted from a Large radio studio but they decided to make the biggest possible tv space by removing almost all of the sound soak from the walls (and has been very lively sounding as a result ever since.)

(Always meant to clean the top of that autocue hood...)

It’s not limited to tv though - an awful lot of the radio studios at NBH are in office space and have very challenging acoustics as a result as I understand it. Somebody decided they’d look awfully good with glass walls so people could see into them. Amazing. They’ve been fitted with some fabric baffle things which are supposed to help.

So looks like Nottingham was the last English regional centre to get a decent studio when they moved (London could be kind of included in that as they definitely got an upgrade from Marylebone High Street when they moved in to New Broadcasting House).

I think Andy Munro would be very annoyed that the cunningness of his acoustic design at NBH is not recognised .....
https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/bbc-radio-gets-a-facelift
just because the walls are reflective does not make the room acoustically lively ....if you reflect the sound arround away from microphones and then into absorbers .
That was the requirement...... a technique used very widely long before the walls became see through !

In tv studios particularly the smaller ones ..the effect of the scenery is often overlooked with very strange results ...

This may be a question you can answer; are things like rogue light and whatnot down to a technical team simply not caring enough or is it money? The Mailbox have had some perfectly lit sets and within a few days or in one case 5 hours (when they changed sets in 2012 springs to mind) the lighting is a washed out mess.

I remember there being some issues with the sound proofing of the BBC London radio studios when they first moved into them from MHS. They had to have some hastily installed soft panels placed in front of the glass walls. That wasn't part of the main BH radio set up though

I don’t wish to upset anyone involved in the design of the studios at NBH at all - I have just heard that they’re a lot livelier sounding than the old bush house studios were and so took some getting used to. I daresay the Studio Managers have adapted well to their new surroundings. I’m still not sure why they need to be glass bubbles within the newsroom though. There is still a place (in my opinion) for separate sound proofed rooms with windows from control room to cubicle.

Regarding scenery and it’s effect on acoustics, Oxford long had a set which consisted largely of a curved flat plastic panel in front of a printed backdrop. It had a great ability to focus sound straight back towards the middle of the studio so if the presenter stood up in the middle (which was occasionally required for some reason) their sound was very odd indeed. The exact same space with the current set sounds completely different.

Bush studios were always very dead ....... and there are some NBH studios which are Camden rather than glass with proper cubicles ..
.e.g for news sequence programmes


I can remember having to sort out a region who had replace a simple stretched hessian backing with the hessian glued to plywood so it did not get damaged ..
And then blamed the bathroom effect on the fact that I had just changed the cameras !!!!!! Must be many years ago now !!!
So I got new flats made with stretched hessian then rockwool panel so that
the hessian could not be cut accidentally and weld mesh on the back
..... audible magic !!!!!