The LNN News Move And Network Presentation Thread

I don't think that they did, I spent a couple of days in LNNs library many many years ago and it just had LNN and LWT News' material. The library operation has grown somewhat since then though. If they don't have it I'd certainly be interested in where it is for professional reasons.

Would Thames have used MII for it's news? They certainly used it for transmission (I worked with old TX kit when I was at Pearson), but I wouldn't have thought that there was much in the way of MII ENG equipment.

I would very much doubt it as they've just rebuilt it. Also ITN have very minimal experience of playout or transmission. There is absolutely no advantage to moving it.

To be honest I'd be quite surprised if even after the move they didn't still use that great studio for London Today/Tonight - it's a great asset to the programme , although presenting the programme several miles from the newsroom would be problematic

Trust me, a Baronetcy is the way to go. And that crochet always looks such a dangerous game. All those big mallets and hoops to fall over.

They could always just do it from ITN with the view from the window recreated as a background. It does make for some great shots, doesn't it? Except on the late summaries where they keep catching the autoscript reflection on the glass!

Anyone remember LWT's first effort with that sort of backgorund? They started a thing called "The weekend live" with - IIRC - Frank Bough. It was supposed to keep popping up at programme junctions to do "updates from our studio here, high above the South Bank" on the fascinating activities happening in London that particular weekend. I don't think it lasted more than a weekend or two, before it became painfully obvious there was nothing to talk about and it was quietly dropped.

Surely now that the LBC radio stations have left the Gray's Inn Road, there is plenty of room for LNN and their 130 staff, or will that be 30?

Weekend Live was presented by Mike Smith, Frank Bough presented the programme on Friday nights (6 O Clock Live IIRC). It lasted a bit longer than a couple of weeks but after a big launch it did die off over its run. On LWTs birthday weekend it was renamed '21 Live'

They used another studio nearer the top of the tower, not the one that London Tonigth use now

MII was effectively a Panasonic equivalent of the Sony Beta SP format. It was originally designed for ENG and EFP - there were certainly MII dockable camera-back recorders available (just as there were Beta SP docking backs) It performed marginally better than Beta SP - and so was deployed as a 1" replacement by Thames and Anglia. It was certainly Anglia TV's ENG standard for many years, as well as a non-news production format. I well remember the problems caused when Beta SP-based BBC East and MII-based Anglia News needed to share pooled material...

There was also cheaper, professional MII kit made in the mid-90s, in the same way that Sony produced non-Broadcast quality PVW and UVW Beta SP kit as well as the broadcast quality BVW stuff.

Whilst technically, in recording quality terms, a slightly better format than Beta SP, MII suffered as a result of being made by Panasonic, who made (and still make) inferior cameras... When integrated camcorders (rather than dockable recorder backs and separate cameras) became popular (as they were lighter weight and smaller) people bought camcorders based on their camera performance - so bought Sony... (Or Ikegami or BTS - all of whom made Beta SP camcorders) ISTR that MII was less reliable, and the heads not as long-lasting when compared to BVW kit?

I've always heard it had a reputation for being prone to drop-outs, certainly the MII VTs I worked with seemed to needed maintainance quite often, but that was probably due to the age of the machines.

One good thing about MII was that the tapes were roughly the same size as VHS tapes (it was effectively the broadcast quality version of VHS in the same way that Beta SP was to Betamax) so I always had an ample supply of quite smart heavy duty boxes for my video collection.

Yep - ISTR that in extremis you could use Betamax tapes (if you could find them) in original Betacam and Betacam SP kit. Because the Betamax tape was quite poor quality it would only allow you to record in the Betacam (not the Betacam SP) format - which meant this cheat could only be used on BVW (not UVW or PVW kit that won't record Beta, only SP)

I don't think MII was backwards compatible with MI in the same way (and MI was not the success that non-SP Beta was)

I think that the ability to deploy Beta SP kit to record/replay in the Beta format was also a perceived advantage. Beta tape (Oxide) was much cheaper than Beta SP (Metal) tape - meaning certain users could run on cheaper tape stock... (Look East was shot on Beta stock, using Beta SP kit, for a long time - in fact until the Cambridge sub-opt ISTR)

On the subject of domestic-derived 1/2" VT formats :

Beta, Beta SP, Beta SX, DigiBeta and IMX formats all have small cassettes the same size as the original Betamax format.
MI, MII and D9/Digital S all have cassettes the same size as the standard VHS tape.