The five main PSBs switching to 14:9

That's how these things used to appear to happen - complete set refreshes over a weekend at most without the show decamping to a foyer for a month.

Or could they have done all the weekend bulletins from another studio (TC2?) against a big blue background? Pre key each camera with the appropriate chunk of the virtual background and keep the cameras static, nobody would have known the difference.

Either that or they had two sets of the virtual kit, from when World had the same look. Could the spare have been set up in TC2 etc?

You could tell when the "virtual" era had moved to N6 because it didn't quite 'look' the same on screen. Not the "virtual" elements, but any wide shots that included the desk definitely looked different. Was the desk smaller in N6?

Yes - the desk and overall set were both smaller in N6 ISTR.

The cameras had to be static on-shot with that look anyway - as it wasn't actually VR (hence 'virtual' in quotes).

All movement on-shot was largely done by static shots fed into Charisma DVE which ran moves slaved to CRV Laserdisc pre-rendered backdrops (two discs slaved with key and fill in some cases)

Thank you, noggin, for confirming I wasn't imagining things! So, N6 probably opened in 1998 like N8.


Given noggin's confirmation, I think this is most likely. Take a look at the daytime summary from the last weekday of this look: https://youtu.be/PEVdaIfKS1U?t=92. It ends without the usual wide shot, but instead uses a full frame sting. My guess is that this is how the last weekend bulletins might have looked. There are some examples of the One and Nine from the last weekday and they appear to use N6 as usual. So, the morning summary must have been a dry run for the weekend. I suspect the last bulletin from N6 was the Nine on Friday 7th May. They would then have had the weekend to make the set changes.

And since Business Breakfast (and Breakfast News) had moved to TC7 already, it probably meant that only one desk was needed in N6 because it was only the main bulletins that would be broadcast from there anyway.

It's all starting to make sense now...

Sorry - missed that point. Very unlikely that would have been possible. N1 and N2 - the old 6th floor News studios used by the 'Virtual' blue BBC One and BBC World news bulletins up until that point were PAL analogue composite - and N6 and TC7 (like N8 and N9) were Serial Digital Component. The CRV laser disc players are likely to have been re-used, and it's also probably that the Charismas were too. However the upstream keyers were definitely not re-used (N6 had a pile of Crystal Vision SDI chroma keyers installed)

Also - I'm not sure BBC World News had moved out of N1 at that point (though this is 20 years ago...) News 24 was in N9 until November 1998 (when they moved into N8 ), and then there was a period of training and set installation in N9 before BBC World moved in?

That's a good point, with some creative scheduling it may have been possible to just use N1 while World News was playing a back half hour filler?

I was actually completely unaware until now that the blue news set ever came from N6, I'd just assumed it came into use with the revamp.

Did they also simulate the ARC'ing artefacts and reduced horizontal bandwidth? Or was it assumed that viewers wouldn't be bright enough to notice those? (alas it seems most of them weren't!)

In cases when a programme has had to move out of the studio for a while it's usually because of work in the studio itself rather than just a set change.

In a region which only had one studio they've got no choice but to find an alternative location for a weekend.