Radio Studio Design

It’s becoming increasingly common for big commercial radio stations to design their studios with video in mind. With these being kind of TV sets - with the likes of Jago designing them - within radio studios it seems appropriate to put this here as others may well be interested.


Of course LBC and other Global stations have been doing this for a while.

talkRadio seems to have moved into News UK HQ today, and I think their new ‘set’ is rather nice and a lot tidier than LBC’s efforts.



Also works better than sister station talkSPORT's new 'set', as I don't think scrolling text look is that great.



Talking of LBC, I know they’ve not long changed theirs.

I guess it just creates a much more pleasant working atmosphere than a crampt little shed-like studio would. It also allows for a much more professional YouTube promotion.

A vast improvement. I had thought it surprising that talkRADIO had such a pokey affair considering the money behind it.

Talk Radio's new set is better than some of the tired BBC regional news ones.

I find the LBC one to be quite gaudy. The Talk Radio 'set' looks a lot nicer.

Night-time variant. (spot the Iain Lee cameo).

Ken from Newcastle calls James Whale for the last time because his show has become "a continuous platform for immoral LGBT ideology."@THEJamesWhale | @virtualash pic.twitter.com/V4yx7B3yWp

— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) May 21, 2019

That's because their old premises at Hatfield (just round the corner from The London Studios) came a long time before Mr Murdoch came along. When they moved into it there was just one station - Talk Radio which then became TalkSport. It was owned by a group headed up by Kelvin Mckensie then, they moved out of their old Oxford Street studios after they bought the station


Then a few years ago they expanded and launched Virgin and its spinoffs, Talk Sport 2 and Talk Radio so they crammed in new studios for those. I seem to remember Iain Lee say that their studio was built in the corner of an office. It did look very temporary, I think there was a rush to get them ready. It was only now that Wireless is owned by News UK that they've taken them into their building

At one point installed multiple small studios to fulfil a contract for multi language Premier League commentary, I'm not sure if that's still going


In fact the other commercial stations buildings in London have had a similar history - both Golden Square, home of Bauer and Leicester Square, home of Global were originally occupied by one station, now they both have loads coming out of them (although a lot of Bauers stations coming out of 1 Golden Square are just automated jukebox style stations, there are just as many that have proper studio presentation, either live or pre recorded. It's launched two of these this year

The previous LBC one was nicer, they seemed to make it feel smaller and the background seem more old fashioned last time they changed it

I'm not sure it's necessarily as nice to work in as a traditional studio though. They always look a bit sterile compared with those at the BBC, though the studios at BH are more set up for video than others

The Radio 2 studio that was shown all day for the danceathon thing a few months back looked shabby and cluttered and a bit old fashioned, but I think I'd prefer to work in one of them than a brightly lit one

TalkRADIO new set I believe has been used by Chris Evans since he moved over to Virgin Radio while waiting for Virgin new studio to be ready. I guess now TalkRADIO has moved in to there new studio the new Virgin one will be revealed soon.

The new LBC studio design is the standard design Global are rolling out to all the stations. The studios for Capital and Heart are identical, just with different graphics on the displays. The key benefit of the new design is the big panel which usually shows the logo doubles up as a Skype display for the presenter to talk to during remote interviews.


As it is now I feel it doesn't work as well for LBC as it does for Capital and Heart, but with some lighting adjustments (bit darker, more blue perhaps?) it could work quite well.

I’ll pass all of your thoughts to James Rea and Ashley Tabor as Global Academy Alumni.