BBC One

Ahh - a very nice tour of the old presentation area at Television Centre, the original presentation area that took over from Lime Grove in the late 60s.

They started in Pres A (one of two small studios, originally designed for Weather presentation and in-vision continuity, but also used for things like The Old Grey Whistle Test, Points of View and other small-scale studio programmes). As Andi left the studio, you could just make out the door to the right into Pres B. He then went into the Pres A control room and finally into NC1 and finally Con-1. It's somewhat staggering now to see just how many people were employed in the department - a full gallery team for the studio and a full gallery team for network control. There'd have been another gallery team accross the corridor doing BBC Two as well and possibly more people involved in the production and voicing of trails.

None of this exists at all now. The area was closed in 1997ish (Pres-A was the last bit to remain in use). When the digital channels BBC Choice and Knowledge and the widescreen versions of BBC 1 and 2 were launched new control rooms where built in the area featured in that video. For a long time, the studios themselves remained totally stripped to bare brick walls, but were eventually knocked to bits and fashioned into more control rooms and an area for presentation of the interactive streams on digital television. Of course, the Presentation Department became Red Bee Media and moved out of Television Centre completely, once again leaving that bit of Television Centre (as far as I know) 'available'.

I watched the repeat of 'Merlin' yesterday and came to the conclusion that it was nothing short of an atrocity against Saturday night television.

Merlin could be any binge-drinking student from any university in the country. Everytime you see a lawn outside a castle, it's perfectly cut when it should be wildly overgrown - I know this is only a small point, but it reflects the overall carelessness of the filming. The background music was a clichéd insult to the viewer's intelligence and was overused to make bland sequences seem more interesting when they should be interesting without it. I couldn't empathise with any of the characters, there was no real emotion put into their portrayal and the dialogue was lazy throughout. It should be on CBBC, not BBC One on Saturday nights.

QFT (Quoted for truth)
Problems...

Merlin looked to modern.
Predictable plot.
Lame Music (Which sounds just like the soundtrack of a certain disney film).
The fact that, like robin hood, it was all modernized.
Merlin's Rivals being similarly modern day teens.
The fact that he got fresh fruit and veg thrown at him, where as in real life, no one would be stupid enough to waste fresh veg.
S**T Acting.
American(IE. Robin hood esque) titles


Truly, it was ghastly.

I thought Robin Hood was worse, this has a bit more going for it. But the best acting came from the older actors, Anthony Head and John Hurt as the dragon. Young actors seem to have no character or personality.

The big 'Tonight on BBC1' trails with clips of all the programmes were very time consuming and expensive to make, probably the reason they dropped them

Could you explain why they were expensive to make? Is it something to do about paying for clips of shows or something like that?

It's more labour intensive. With a normal clip-based trail, they just go and get a copy of the programme and edit the best bits into 30 seconds, it's relatively simple

With a long menu trail they've got to do that probably 6 times, finding shorter snippits for each (it's more difficult to find a 5 second clip that summerises the programme than a 30 seconder). And then there's the co-ordination of getting the footage and then there's having to work out what to do with those programmes that are live or not ready/available for the trail.

For a trail that might only go out a couple of times it's a lot of work. The split between Production company, the BBC and Red Bee would make it even more complicated, but In a future where everything is tapeless it will be a lot simpler

i completely disagree!

menus are far far simplier to make and way cheaper.
only one person is involved. they whizz through each programme and pick out a snappy clip. they put it together. it goes on air. it shouldn't take more than a day.

a trail for an individual programme involves just about everyone, marketeers, bbc execs, programme makers, each with their own take on what should be shown/said in the trail. the tone, music, script, which actors should be face checked, who they want to target with the promo...honestly the list goes on. and this takes far longer than a day. and far more money than a menu.

oh and clips for programmes don't cost anything. not if they're being used to promote when they are being shown. hope that clears up a few things.

and yeah, tapeless environment... i'm not holding my breath on that one!

Merlin. Hmm...

Well. I don't like the titles, and the music's a bit naff. However, John Hurt, Anthony Head, Richard Wilson and Eve Myles were all excellent, and Colin Morgan wasn't bad . The problem is the banter between Merlin and Arthur. It's a bit... well... clichéd for my liking. As was the predictable 'take your shirt off and wait for the ladies to swoon' scene, which seemed cut-and-pasted from Robin Hood .

I mean, it's going a bit far to call it soft torture porn, but it seemed that the scene was simply there to hook people in who were getting bored. And Guinevere (sorry, Gwen) I found very interesting. "I'm Guinevere, but most people just call me Gwen. You may also have seen me in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and National Lottery Live ."

It wasn't bad, considering it was the first episode, but I sincerely hope this is better than the last series of Robin Hood .

But as I said, it's not so much the actual production, it's the logistics of getting the programmes or bits of programmes together to make the trail. It would have been easier when everything was BBC and made in TV Centre. The tapes get moved between and booked into/out of the various departments in BBC and Red Bee enough already

'No more than a day' maybe, but when you've got to do 7 a week and get them ready a few days before the actual schedule goes out... that's a heck of a job and it would take more than one person



I have been to one place which really was tapeless (except for a few old betas awaiting transfer)... Bloomberg London

Isn't the BBC newsroom going tapeless soon? I think it's a shame we don't get full trailers anymore, it helps to get the message across about what's on and when.

When they move to Broadcasting House I'd have thought they would be totally, I don't think they're far off now, certainly more so over the last few years. It's far easier to do when you're starting from scratch