Alright On The Night

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but at the end of last weekend's "Alright On The Night", it said "Recorded At Meridian Studios". It is usually made at the London Studios.

It was still made by LWT though. I don't know why GR/N/D/ bother with all their production brands. I don't think it'll be long before we see lots of GR/N/D/ Production slides at the end of programmes.

The past few have been recorded at Meridian. I guess they've gotta find one reason to keep the studios open. As for the brand thing, it's still made by LWT, they just use the Meridian studios, but you are quite right its all Granada, I think they might even skip the GRANADA branding and go for ITV1 branding following the merger that will no doubt happen.

canned / super-imposed audience too. sad. very sad.

Afraid not...friends of mine went to see it being recorded!

is one sure? totally sure???

The material was cropped to 16:9 for the first time. They've cropped it to 14:9 with a blurred effect at the sides before, it looked very good. Even on Freeview I can't get 16:9 Letterbox thanks to their AFD's, but that's ITV for you.

Well, would the voiceover ask people to welcome Denis Norden if there was no audience present?

A bit puzzling though. Is Upper Ground now out of bounds to our Denis? Given his age - he's 81 - you would think LWT would have used the studios that have been home to "Alright" since the off, rather than bundle him off to Southampton (or wherever the Meridian studios are). The editing was very sloppy though, which probably gives the impression that the laughter was canned.
This was very evident on an earlier Alright on the Night - Cockup Trip back in 1996 - with over-long applause from the studio audience at the start and what puported to be canned laughter during the links, when in fact it was a real audience laughing at a playback of the show. The poor editing gave an artificial to it; one of the Laughter File series (no.5) also suffered from this.

Surely if you're going to edit a programme, you do it right - or is this further evidence of ITV1 cost-cutting?

well on THAT basis, why, on any show with a taped audience, does the host come out and thank the audience that isn't there? huh? answer me that one, columbo!

i would urge the earlier correspondent to check to see that it WAS alright 16 his buddies went to see... cos i believe, from the evidence i've seen the last few shows, he could just be mistaken. i have doubted the existence of an audience since alright 12 or there abouts...

[quote="Steven O"
A bit puzzling though. Is Upper Ground now out of bounds to our Denis? Given his age - he's 81 - you would think LWT would have used the studios that have been home to "Alright" since the off, rather than bundle him off to Southampton[/quote]

It does depend on where he lives, if he has a house in the New Forest it is much nearer!

It does depend on where he lives, if he has a house in the New Forest it is much nearer![/quote]

According to Who's Who, he lives in London (and always has done).

Perhaps he enjoys the nice drive down there?

On Cockup Trip you could certainly doubt the presence of an audience, although there was one (admittedly added later via playback), IMO it was very poorly edited and gave an impression that it was canned laughter rather than live.

Alright 11 didn't come from the studio, but from the Haymarket Theatre in London, so I would say that the laughter on the clips featured that time round was canned (note that there was none on the links).
Denis Norden is well-known for his wit and I don't think it would be much of an atmosphere if there was no audience in the studio! I'd say that poor editing, as in the case of Alright on the Night's Cockup Trip, is responsible - note also that the producer has changed for the most recent instalments, so that might also explain things.