News Room South East

They live in Battersea, which will get London Live. Quite how they manage to have a house in the north and a very expensive flat in London, when he is Bankrupt, escapes me

test post
sorry i'm ot - but hey i'm back off hols!!!

The house in Nether Alderly is in Christine Hamilton's name - a wise move! I'm not sure about the London flat.

BTW: The Hamiltons' accuser claims in this morning's NotW that SHE will be suing the Hamiltons for defamation. Private Eye have a good cover this week effectively saying the Hamiltons are innocent - and pigs will fly!

Well Laurie is returning to his roots really.

He presented the South East regional news when the South East regional news came from Lime Grove. He certainly used to present 'South East at Six' which was the local news within Nationwide. I think he had moved on to other things before Sixty Minutes and London Plus (the latter being the last SE local prog from Lime Grove, before BBC South East moved to Elstree, and launched Newsroom South East)

I remember he did a stint on Breakfast Time in the late 80s before leaving the BBC.

I don't know, but I think all this talk of 'piloting' means the following:

Laurie Meyer (and the whole Tunbridge Wells crew) are simulating making a live broadcast of South East Today during the 2 pre-launch weeks. They presumably all behave as if they were being transmitted into people's homes (although they're obviously not, yet) - this means Laurie can't say 'I'm sorry can we do that again' and have a Take 2.

BTW Does anyone know what the view in the window is? (presumably Tunbridge Wells, yes, but can anyone be more specific?)

Yep - that pretty much describes what I would expect that they are doing. This would be called real-time piloting.

It will be vital to do this in the case of a new programme launching in a new building, with a new gallery and studio, new editing technology and new staff working together for the first time. If you don't real time pilot - you don't really know if it is all going to work until launch !

As for the window... I would expect it to be a view of something pretty in Tunbridge Wells - most of the BBC windows are of a nice view of the town in which the regional centre is based. (Though these views are a compromise based on where a live camera can be situated and beam back a picture to the regional centre)

(Elstree was an exception to this, as they used a central London Thames-scape from the roof of Bush House, even though they were based in Hertfordshire and the Oxford opt, whilst featuring an Oxford city-scape, comes from Southampton's small second studio)

There are two different views. Maybe they were trying some out. One is the view over St John's Road, the main road into Tunbridge Wells from London. Is this where the studios are? You'd have thought they's have the view of somewhere interesting, like the Pantiles rather than a nightly traffic jam

(Edited by marcus at 12:02 pm on Aug. 27, 2001)

Manchester's view isn't pretty I wish they'd change theirs, its all rooftops of the buildings on Oxford Steet. I like Newsline's!

The view on Reporting Scotland has to be the most minging thing I've ever seen - of all the lovely scenery they could have chosen (princes street in Edinburgh etc), they inexplicably chose a grim view over a Glasgow industrial estate! Classy.