Regional Pres Desks

Just going back a couple of pages, that youtube link about last regional closedown by BBC North West; did all the regions really do every junction themselves in those days?

And on this subject, what is the situation with the stations in England today? Regional idents with continuity go out almost always before the main news now but seems recorded and usually by someone who's not really adept at making announcements (at least in the North West). Are all the regions still capable of doing their own live continuity if they felt like and were allowed to do it?

That's because when they need a new announcement made they'll just find the nearest person with a half decent voice to record it - be that a reporter, producer or radio presenter.


It depends what you mean by 'do their own continuity'? A BBC regional centre is equipped to put out live news bulletins even with minimal staffing. During Breakfast there might be as few as 2 people in the gallery - there's not a great deal of difference between that and putting out a junction between 2 programmes. In fact in some ways a news bulletin is more complicated.

Most, if not all regions would at some point have put out an alternative schedule of an evening. It's just a case of getting trails, idents etc loaded onto the server and playing them out correctly. Announcements can even be live if you want, you have a studio and lots of microphones!

I worked on one of these many years ago and did it just like that. Some items - trails and programmes we had in advance, other stuff (the weather and network announcements for example) was recorded off the network feed onto server and clipped up. Everything was put into ENPS (the news production system) for playout and run like a breakfast bulletin. The regional ident and announcements were pre-built and we just played everything in the right order, dropping or adding trails to time.

It's all the ancillary stuff that the region won't be able to do - widescreen switching, audio description, pre-recorded subtitles, HD etc

When BBC Midlands did a time-shifted BBC One service, we were treated to boxless BBC One idents (still in the dancers era) and live continuity, announcements following the format; "Now on One..." or "Next on One..." something London had banned many moon ago.

Wasn't this in the days of Pebble Mill though when BBC Mids was able to run the network as a backup?

Yes, but only the 'live' bits. Trailers were still from network, as were VOs over end credits, (not surprisingly !). Programme boards were from network, but with local VO. Certainly as viewed on BBC South, it was generally a mess, split second glimpses of the network globe or clock, network announcer heard over the top of the local one etc etc

Yes, but it's a common misconception that Pebble Mill had "full presentation facilities" for the networks standing by. They didn't. What they had was VT suites, Studio Galleries A and C (until they were closed), Edit Suites and Voiceover Booths which could be reconfigured to provide Network Presentation facilities. Quite a difference. It worked and would have been ok in an emergency but it was something of a lash-up and might well have been rough and ready on-air as everything had to be done manually and timings had to be done without the aid of computers - something a lot of Pres staff had seldom done on-air themselves and those that had, hadn't done in a long time.

When regional centres did continuity themselves it was with mixed results. I remember a few nights of timeshifted programmes coming from Manchester back in 2005. There was a regional programme in four or five regions but not a proper slot provided by the network. Those regions opting played their 45 minute programme at 2235 after the weather, then took a delayed feed of the network from Manchester following the programme and until News 24. Manchester made some static graphic menus to explain the new schedule (this was before the EPG was fully configurable for English regions) and did their own live (out-of-vision) continuity with Nigel Jay (ISTR). It was pretty good in terms of presentation style (though the menus looked a little odd) but cropped to 14:9 as Studio-B was still pre-16:9 conversion. Can't remember what the regional programme was and why all regions weren't doing it...

This was 2005 too, BBC West Midlands (post Mill) were timeshifting with "Now on One" at every junction.
It was like this, only no boxes on the idents:

Well yes, the opt out would be run by regional news staff with no knowledge or care for any branding guidelines. The Dancers idents were all made centrally and then sent to the regions on tape, maybe they included blanks for some reason too for some reason and they were what was used, probably without anyone noticing or having time to get the proper ones.

Despite that sort of thing, when these opt-outs happen the region isn't all by itself. For us Presentation planning supplied schedules and we got copies of some of the time-shifted programmes sent on tape, they also made sure that the opt-back time was fixed so we knew what time we had to hit (we had less flexibility then network of course).


As Deejay says that's not how things were set up. The evening would have been run through the normal news gallery/studio. As I mentioned above, you don't really need special facilities to do it. Obviously it's not as straightforward or easy as it is with permanent playout facilities.

Well it's not like they couldn't have overlaid the BBC One logo, if they wanted to. They had a CG that could handle logos.

I never quite understood why they would have had the blanks either, they also had the blanks from 2006 alongside a matte for the logo form up.

The technical ability to do it, but as I said maybe they just realised too late that they didn't have any non-midlands versions

Good point.

This certainly happened one year due to the regional Sports Awards programmes. Leeds did their own thing and then took a feed from Manchester (or I suspect just opted out of circuit in the usual way- Manchester CTA could have put Manchester pres output onto Leeds network feed?) which was using the dancers idents with a "NORTH" (in capitals) legend keyed over the red box. The arrangement they were using meant that the time shifted network programmes couldn't have subtitles, including the Sign Zone, IIRC.