The Late Late Show in London

Don't suppose anyone's going to watch this next week? Three specials in London, being broadcast on Sky 1, Wednesday-Friday at 10pm. Quite a lot of outdoor advertising for this.



http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/late-late-show-announces-london-guests-1202448714/

David Letterman once did a week of shows in London which were broadcast on BBC2 called 'Letterman in London'.

I was surprised they're using Westminster Central Hall as the venue for this. I'm guessing they might be using the studio that was used by the Terry & Gaby Show on C5 some several years ago, which I recall is quite small when compared with the sort of studio most US late night talk shows are recorded at. Letterman (IIRC) was in studio 2 at TLS when he brought his Late Show to London back in 1995.

And the production team had VU meters fitted to the sound desk, ( They don't use PPM in the US)

VU = 'virtually useless'

So the US get the first look, makes sense. Although given they'll record it on Tuesday afternoon, it'll be longer than normal before it gets broadcast, and well over a day later for the UK showing so I can't see it being particularly topical - maybe just the election in general terms?

Looking forward to it though, I'll be interested to see how far they've tweaked titles/set/features. A London version of their LA backdrop would look great.

Close. Letterman 'taped' in Studio 1.
I remember Broadcast magazine (back in the day when it was full of useful information, rather than the cheap feeling comic it's become) had an interview with Rob Morton, the exec producer of The Late Show, who said they spent a long weekend touring studio facilities in London finding the right location.
IIRC they looked at Pinewood, LWT, BBC TV Centre and a couple of West End theatres with large spaces outside to park up the OB's.

LWT won out, because there was more office space in the tower for the production team to hunker down in, than at TV Centre - plus, being in the centre(ish) of London they could get the UK/USA actors appearing in the West End plays before they went on stage that evening - Letterman still recorded at 5pm UK time.

The only concession LWT/ TLS had to make, was to weld an iron beam across the grid of Studio 1, so they could hang extra lighting in the range of the desk, to add extra brightness for those NTSC cameras, that US tv were still using back in the mid 90's.

Terry and Gabby came from County Hall

This is Westminster Central Hall It's the venue that the BBC have used for their New Year concerts the last few years, Stand Up For Cancer used it once too. The interior looks like this

Ahhh, now that seems a bit more suited to this sort of show. Obviously I got the two venues mixed up. Still surprised they didn't opt for a more conventional TV studio for this though rather than a concert venue. Makes me think, if Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon did a week of their respective shows in London, what sort of venue would be used, whether they would opt for a TV studio or not.

Colbert and Fallon haven't got the UK profile of Corden though so a smaller venue may suffice.

Goodness knows what age cameras they were ! NTSC cameras of that era were no different in their light handling than any other format ! Couldn't have been any worse than the Hitachis TLS had back then ?

I'm afraid there are a few errors in your post. The show was recorded, in PAL in St2, around tea time (UK time) as the production crew wanted to keep the studio recording time they used in the US. It was then edited in one of the edit suits at TLS and then played out to the US via a standards converter in TLS Lines. The US crew brought over their own standards converter as they thought the TLS one was inferior, in the end they discovered the opposite was true and they ended up using the TLS in house converter. So the programme was recorded using TLS's normal Hitachi cameras which, although problematic in their very early days with genlock glitches actually gave very good pictures. The studio did have additional (and totally un-necessary) structural steels inserted into the existing roof space to take additional lighting (none of which was necessary in practice but hey ho he who pays the piper etc). The additional steels are still in place.

The production team did not have office space in the tower block, the coffee and bar area was closed to normal use for the week and converted to office space for the exclusive use of the production team during their stay.

Nothing wrong with the Hitachi cameras after their inital genlock glitch problems were sorted out by two gentlemen from Japan.