Vote 2013

There will be three hours of coverage on BBC2 on Friday 3rd May - at 12pm, 2pm and 5pm. IIRC the special 'Vote' coverage usually continues on the News Channel in between the BBC2 hours

TV Choice states Huw Edwards will be presenting - doesn't David Dimbleby normally do the local elections?

Dimbleby did it last year and IIRC the same sort of split shift programming. I'm sure Barry Hearn will be delighted the BBC are going off air for an hour midway through a semi-final of the snooker - really if they are doing a split show there is no reason the middle one couldn't be on BBC1 from 2.15-3pm instead.

Usually, but not always. I remember in 1999, the week before Huw took over the Six, there was a very odd local elections show which also incorporated the Scottish and Welsh Assembly elections, so overnight it was Kirsty Wark from Glasgow and Huw Edwards from London, then the following day Huw from Cardiff.

Strange for it to be on BBC2 so there can't be regional opt outs

Daytime local election coverage is usually on BBC2

Worth remembering as well that Wales only has one council election, Scotland and Northern Ireland none IIRC, and some English Regions may have none/very few as well - so for many it's a pretty irrelevant election day, and some parts of the UK would have little or no need for an opt-out.

That doesn't preclude network doing something regionally safe while those regions who have something to cover locally opt out.

An opt-out would be a 'nice to have', but the main national programme will hopefully have more time to cover individual results with the relatively small number of contests this year (compared to many other years)

I guess though the BBC have decided it's just not worth disrupting the BBC1 schedule for

Shame they think differently when it comes to the likes of Wimbledon?

All the more sense to do them as opt outs and for the nations to show something completely different, though of course they could do that even on BBC2.

I think with elections on this sort of scale you either need to cover the whole thing live or just have a decent round up once it's all over. This kind of falls somewhere in between and it didn't feel quite right last year having coverage continually switch from BBC2 to BBC News and in trying to find a compromise it probably won't serve it's audience as best it could this year.

Sorry if this has been missed, but do we know where the coverage will originate from? I'm guessing NBH, as usuall BBC News studios were used at TVC previously, but does anyone know which studio? Studio A will presumably be used for Vine's green screen stuff and C will be on air for WN, so I wonder if Studio B might be used? There wouldn't be much chance to rehearse in Studio E, and I wonder how much the increased-automation would work with a special/one-off programme? Can the cameras be easily (to broadcast standard) controlled 'manually' (I.e. by joystick in the gallery, rather than Mosart sending cameras to pre-defined locations) in the (more-)automated studios, or would a whole programmes format effectively need to have been programmed into the system ahead of time*? Of course, running Studio B might be more expensive for three hours of nighttime programming, but overall less confined?

*Assuming camera shots and overall presentation differed significantly from usual programming, which it may well not in this case.

Looking at the hours it could come from C as world are in B during the afternoon.

I'm not sure quite how, but my exhausted mind read '2pm' as '2am'. Because that would make heaps of sense.

Yes, Studio C would seem like the only viable studio at that time of day. Presumably the News Channel will maintain a studio for the day, be it C or E, in case of major breaking news requiring them to break away from election coverage. Still, studio C might feel a bit odd on screen for election coverage*. I wonder if they'd use a special backdrop, as opposed to the standard newsroom balcony shot?

*So would studio E.