Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Maidstone studios suppoesedly home to the new ITV1 Saturday morning show?
The Maidstone Studios are TVS' former studios (in a past life home to No.73, Motormouth and others), Meridian don't have any production studios in Maidstone
Yep - the TVS Maidstone studios were not bought by Meridian - instead they have been spun off as "Maidstone Studios". Meridian did rent the old Coast to Coast studio (with Coast to Coast moving into the Motormouth studio towards the end of 1992 ISTR) until their own local news centre was built.
It is perfectly conceivable that ITV could be doing their new Saturday show from Maidstone Studios though. SM:TV moved to Riverside Studios (another facilities operation - though at one stage a BBC building in the 60s - and formerly home to TFIFriday) from London Studios (the LWT studio operation) recently.
It is perfectly conceivable that ITV could be doing their new Saturday show from Maidstone Studios though.
It seems pretty likely seeing as it is where The Foundation (who are co-producers of the show) are based and have produced their programmes from previously.
Can someone just confirm what I think is the CURRENT situation at Meridian News.
Southampton is home to Meridian South and Meridian West...
Newbury is home to Meridian South-East....
So Newbury would close down and join West and South's studios at the Meridian Studios in Southampton.
No.
Meridian Newbury was closed last year or this, and both the Southampton (South) and Newbury (North or West?) come from separate studios in Southampton.
Meridian South East (from New Hythe) is still separate and based in the SE region in studio terms.
The proposal is to shut the SE studio operation and move the existing two Southampton based studios to a new studio centre in Hampshire that would co-site all three services.
This, reading between the lines, would also allow them to shut the Southampton centre at Northam, leaving them with a tin-shed on an industrial estate doing the local news, and not much else. (The So'ton studio complex is large, expensive to run, and seldom used for anything but local news, the odd Question Time for the BBC and It'll Be Alright On The Night links... Granada have large production studios in Southampton, London, Norwich, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle etc. They can't be using them all to capacity...)
It is perfectly conceivable that ITV could be doing their new Saturday show from Maidstone Studios though.
It seems pretty likely seeing as it is where The Foundation (who are co-producers of the show) are based and have produced their programmes from previously.
And as I mentioned earlier it does have a good track record of Saturday Morning Kids TV: No.31, 7T3, Motormouth, Whats Up Doc
Since ITN have correspondents dotted about England, could they not just make the news program for each region? Each region could retain a tin shed on an industrial estate like WestCountry, and now Meridian, and use that for sending the video in to ITN. And studio based interviews are in fact totally unecessary nowadays, and a turn off to the lower socio-economic order sound byte preferring viewer.
After all, as a result of the approval of the formation of Granalton,
Quote:
"We will see more seamless news programming - divisions between regional, national and international news will go, and there will be more coherence."
If they can do it for continuity, and this has now been proven to work in practice, it is time to do it for regional new, and the savings can be passed on in the form of increased dividend cheques to the stockholders. You know it makes sense!
Under the smokescreen of the merger and the promise of wizz-bang technology, this announcement has been made. "But we always remain committed to three separate news programmes." - bit harder to do when you're not as local as you once was. I'm not surprised those working at Maidstone are up in arms.
Yep - though Anglia have always based both their regional news programmes in Norwich since they split the East and West of the region - and not many people criticise their regional commitment or coverage. Anglia argued that it was better to invest more money in regional correspondents, bureaux and crews, and save money by co-siting their studio operations.
With modern technology there are fewer technical reasons to site a news operation in the area it covers - where in the past editing (especially film and early VT) had to be on the same site as transmission areas, studios and galleries, this is not really the case anymore. (Hence BBC Oxford coming from BBC Southampton)
Historically TVS set up a full production centre in Maidstone - as part of their regional franchise they had to produce in both their South and South East regions I believe - initially they had a converted theatre (home of Fraggle Rock!) which continued after the full studio centre at Vintners Park opened. As part of the production infrastructure in the South East they were able to co-site their SE news operation - benefiting from a surrounding infrastructure (like engineering, technicians etc.) When Meridian launched they didn't plan any SE production - TVS spun off the SE production facilities as Maidstone Studios via The Family Channel - with Meridian only renting space for their local news until the Meridian New Hythe studios were ready.
However Meridian were then just operating a local news centre in the SE - so although this was a smaller operation it was not subsidised by other production on the site - so was presumably quite expensive to operate for such a small amount of output (presumably similar costs to the BBC regional operations)
Meridian also created their Newbury centre - presumably costing pretty much the same in studio terms (though the Newbury patch is geographically smaller and presumably cheaper to cover in location terms)
With no studio production to speak of at Meridian So'ton, and studios being mothballed there, presumably it was very difficult to argue keeping the Newbury operation going, when there was empty space unused at the So'ton HQ, and with Anglia making a success of their co-sited operation?
Now that even less studio production takes place at So'ton (I here that there is seldom much made there) I guess Granada are looking to sell the site and just run their local news operations as cheaply as possible...
(Out of interest the whole broadcast production landscape may well be changing as technologies develop, not just local news but global production. Quantel have launched a radical new system called Split Remote. In the pilot for this system it allowed an event being recorded in Paris to be edited in Canada - without feeding all of the full quality material to Canada via expensive 24/7 video links. Instead browse quality video was sent to Canada, via low cost, low data rate links, and the Canadian edit decisions sent back to Paris... Then the final edit can be played out from Paris, only requiring an expensive high quality circuit for minutes, not hours, and also not requiring a broadcaster to hire locally, or pay travel, hotels and expenses that would be required by flying their own teams to site. It also allows TV companies to potentially save money by editing in cheap countries. Fox apparently edited Temptation Island in Argentina to save money...)
SMG sold off Grampians Studios at Queens Cross in Aberdeen at a huge profit to house developers and moved the whole outfit to an industrial estate on the city outskirts.
They lost a large production studio in the move and now only have a news studio which is about the same size as an average lounge!! Nothing was made at Grampian after the SMG takeover and I guess the same thing is happening all over the country?
SMG talked it up as if it was a great fantastic move for Grampian.......
........but there is nothing great about it - just watch North Tonight (3 presenters on top of one another) it once was a great programme now its all pretty poor!!
Since ITN have correspondents dotted about England, could they not just make the news program for each region? Each region could retain a tin shed on an industrial estate like WestCountry, and now Meridian, and use that for sending the video in to ITN. And studio based interviews are in fact totally unecessary nowadays, and a turn off to the lower socio-economic order sound byte preferring viewer.
After all, as a result of the approval of the formation of Granalton,
Quote:
"We will see more seamless news programming - divisions between regional, national and international news will go, and there will be more coherence."
If they can do it for continuity, and this has now been proven to work in practice, it is time to do it for regional new, and the savings can be passed on in the form of increased dividend cheques to the stockholders. You know it makes sense!
I'm sure this is being considered - and has been in the past... Politically it would be a very big leap to make - but if ITV Plc (as Granada/Carlton are apparently to be called) also own a large chunk of ITN they could potentially do it - though 20+ regional studios in London would be quite a tall order. (You could do the short bulletins easily though...)
Since ITN have correspondents dotted about England, could they not just make the news program for each region? Each region could retain a tin shed on an industrial estate like WestCountry, and now Meridian, and use that for sending the video in to ITN.
It's technically possible, but logistically it would be a horrendous thing to do. Imagine how many reports are broadcast every evening across all 19 regional news programmes and all of them (or the rushes for them) have to be sent down to a single location in London, turned round and then broadcast simultaneously.
SMG sold off Grampians Studios at Queens Cross in Aberdeen at a huge profit to house developers and moved the whole outfit to an industrial estate on the city outskirts.
They lost a large production studio in the move and now only have a news studio which is about the same size as an average lounge!! Nothing was made at Grampian after the SMG takeover and I guess the same thing is happening all over the country?
Yes it is happening both with the BBC and ITV, but it is only happening becayuse technology has improved so much that is is cheaper and easier than ever to make programmes on location rather than in studios. Studio useage has decreased a lot over the last 10 years. TV companies can't afford to have huge studio complexes lying empty.
In most cases the amount of production has stayed the same, but production has moved from in-studio to on-location
SMG sold off Grampians Studios at Queens Cross in Aberdeen at a huge profit to house developers and moved the whole outfit to an industrial estate on the city outskirts.
They lost a large production studio in the move and now only have a news studio which is about the same size as an average lounge!! Nothing was made at Grampian after the SMG takeover and I guess the same thing is happening all over the country?
Yes it is happening both with the BBC and ITV, but it is only happening becayuse technology has improved so much that is is cheaper and easier than ever to make programmes on location rather than in studios. Studio useage has decreased a lot over the last 10 years. TV companies can't afford to have huge studio complexes lying empty.
In most cases the amount of production has stayed the same, but production has moved from in-studio to on-location
Thats a fair point - but the once great light entertainment shows that were once made in a studio ar now replaced with on location drivell like "club reps", "holiday nightmares / neighbours / weddings" etc, etc, etc!
In Grampians case we used to have our own chat shows, family quiz shows and discussion shows now we have low budget garbage!!