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BBC Broadcast sold to CBS

(but not that one) (June 2005)

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CA
Charles Allen
This is the same group who purchased NTL Broadcast is it not?
TV
tvarksouthwest
So what happens to the announcers? Will those in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow be sacked and their work outsourced to the Broadcast Centre?

Terrible news, for viewers and the BBC. Mark Thompson should have stayed at C4.
DA
Dan Founding member
Charles Allen posted:
This is the same group who purchased NTL Broadcast is it not?


Yes, now called Arqiva.
DA
Dan Founding member
tvarksouthwest posted:
Will those in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow be sacked and their work outsourced to the Broadcast Centre?


No, because the BBC in the nations prefers to transmit its own television channels rather than paying a separate company to do it.
CA
Charles Allen
How long do you reckon before ITV close the transmission centres at LNN and YTV and move all the work to White City, now it's effectively a facility company? My guess would be within 18 months.
DA
Dan Founding member
Charles Allen posted:
How long do you reckon before ITV close the transmission centres at LNN and YTV and move all the work to White City, now it's effectively a facility company? My guess would be within 18 months.


Do you think they would save money by doing that?
DE
denton
tvarksouthwest posted:
So what happens to the announcers? Will those in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow be sacked and their work outsourced to the Broadcast Centre?.


…fortunately not. The Nations are capable of providing their own current level of service more cost-effectively than BBC Broadcast could.

It does leave the Nations in a rather odd position though…. with trails and local programmes being played off BBC owned servers, and announcements being made by BBC staff... while the networked programmes which they transmit are coming down the line from servers owned by a non-BBC company, operated by someone not directly employed by the BBC.

As for the announcers in London, I'm not sure exactly where they sit in the scheme of things. I would think that the BBC would want to retain control of vocal branding of their channels, by incorporating the announcers back in to the main BBC. But, you never know.
TV
tvarksouthwest
denton posted:
As for the announcers in London, I'm not sure exactly where they sit in the scheme of things. I would think that the BBC would want to retain control of vocal branding of their channels, by incorporating the announcers back in to the main BBC. But, you never know.

What implications will the sale have for BBC branding/promotion?

Most people don't care obiously, but the fact that BBC's network playout no longer comes from the Concrete Doughnut was bad enough. Now it won't come from any BBC-owned facility.

Whereas C4, C5 and ITV will continue to transmit from their own facilities. Not how you expected things to happen, is it?
DA
Dan Founding member
denton posted:
I would think that the BBC would want to retain control of vocal branding of their channels, by incorporating the announcers back in to the main BBC. But, you never know.


I think that would have been discussed already if it was going to happen.
NG
noggin Founding member
denton posted:
tvarksouthwest posted:
So what happens to the announcers? Will those in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow be sacked and their work outsourced to the Broadcast Centre?.


…fortunately not. The Nations are capable of providing their own current level of service more cost-effectively than BBC Broadcast could.

It does leave the Nations in a rather odd position though…. with trails and local programmes being played off BBC owned servers, and announcements being made by BBC staff... while the networked programmes which they transmit are coming down the line from servers owned by a non-BBC company, operated by someone not directly employed by the BBC.

As for the announcers in London, I'm not sure exactly where they sit in the scheme of things. I would think that the BBC would want to retain control of vocal branding of their channels, by incorporating the announcers back in to the main BBC. But, you never know.


Though there were mutterings at the BBC R&D open day that it might be more cost effective, and provide higher quality pictures, if the BBC English regions no longer handled their presentation locally.

AIUI the proposal is to follow the ITV1 model and send all of the English regions studio outputs to London, where they would be cut into the network feed, encoded (and statmuxed - which would improve picture quality, or allow greater compression) and then fed to the transmitters directly, bypassing the regional centres on transmission.

There was also mention of replacing the current 9Mbs MPEG2 feeds of BBC One and Two to the Nations, with uncompressed SDI versions, improving the quality (or allowing again for greater compression) in the nations.
DE
denton
noggin posted:
denton posted:
tvarksouthwest posted:
So what happens to the announcers? Will those in Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow be sacked and their work outsourced to the Broadcast Centre?.


…fortunately not. The Nations are capable of providing their own current level of service more cost-effectively than BBC Broadcast could.

It does leave the Nations in a rather odd position though…. with trails and local programmes being played off BBC owned servers, and announcements being made by BBC staff... while the networked programmes which they transmit are coming down the line from servers owned by a non-BBC company, operated by someone not directly employed by the BBC.

As for the announcers in London, I'm not sure exactly where they sit in the scheme of things. I would think that the BBC would want to retain control of vocal branding of their channels, by incorporating the announcers back in to the main BBC. But, you never know.


Though there were mutterings at the BBC R&D open day that it might be more cost effective, and provide higher quality pictures, if the BBC English regions no longer handled their presentation locally.

AIUI the proposal is to follow the ITV1 model and send all of the English regions studio outputs to London, where they would be cut into the network feed, encoded (and statmuxed - which would improve picture quality, or allow greater compression) and then fed to the transmitters directly, bypassing the regional centres on transmission.

There was also mention of replacing the current 9Mbs MPEG2 feeds of BBC One and Two to the Nations, with uncompressed SDI versions, improving the quality (or allowing again for greater compression) in the nations.


There is also the idea of giving the Nations the ability to FTP material from London, to local servers for playout. Thus allowing for greater scheduling flexibility in the Nations.
NG
noggin Founding member
denton posted:

There is also the idea of giving the Nations the ability to FTP material from London, to local servers for playout. Thus allowing for greater scheduling flexibility in the Nations.


That would make sense - AIUI something similar is used by ITV for non--live news contributions already. They all share the same ATM capacity and can schedule non-real time transfers that opportunitically use the bandwith available?

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