The Steph Show

It's likely that the delay on the circuit from The Steph Show is different from the delay on the C4 News circuit (possibly several seconds out) which makes taking a cue from one and giving a cue to the other quite tricky to work out... and add into the equation that there is also a delay on the Morpheus playout automation of around 3 seconds from hitting Take Next to the cut actually happening. I also suspect that cutting from one live source directly to another live source is not something that the C4 pres directors are all that used to doing. Once they've got used to the three different delays involved, it should hopefully get better.

In fairness to the pres directors though, they're at a massive disadvantage... a hard cut from one presenter to another from a different source is rarely a good idea. A 6 or 7 second sting played out from The Steph Show, with a bit of living hold on the end, would make things much easier... it would give them a definite hard count out from Leeds (rather than waiting on a presenter to eventually stop speaking), which would give pres a chance to hit Take at the minus 3 and give C4 News an offset count in.

Sounds about right, although Morphepus takes 3 seconds to do a manual cut? If so that seems an unacceptable delay to me especially when automation systems used to be able to it with no delay

The other solution is to feed the news to Leeds and then get them to cut to them. Although I suspect that's not an option while it's being done from a house. Once it's in a studio with lower latency circuits in and out it will be seamless

If there's a sat truck on site, then an extra 15 minute slot on the same satellite would be a fairly simple solution - though it depends on what kind of resources they have on their vision mixer.

There’s a satellite feed but it’s encrypted so I didn’t try.

You could also do the reverse - take the part of The Steph Show before the News bulletin via the Channel Four News gallery at Gray's Inn Road (or via their MCR) and let ITN cut away for the News? That would be clean - but if you didn't want to route the whole part of The Steph Show via ITN you could do a hot switch (there would no doubt be a few frames of delay introduced via the circuits to and from ITN) just before the junction.

I imagine there's quite a lot of spare and presumably cheap space on satellites at the moment

I'm still trying to figure out the point of "Bingo the sound man" who loiters outside Steph's window holding a boom mic like a beardy Little Bo Peep. What useful purpose is he serving there?

Still not quite cracked the cross to C4 News. Ended up crashing in after the bulletin had started today.

I think the sound man angle is just his excuse.

130,000 (1.6%) share yesterday

I think they made a mistake deliberately launching early in these times

People are perfectly happy and understanding watching an established format in a ramshackle form

But when its a new show and it doesn't have a known format, people are less accepting.

I wouldn’t say the show is in a ramshackle form, the ‘set’ isn’t too bad and I imagine a lot of the interviews will be done down the line anyway.

I can’t see this doing any better when there isn’t the captive audience. But we know Channel 4 probably wouldn’t have commissioned the show in the first place if it wasn’t to make a point of their Leeds HQ.

With the news of difficulties for Channel 4, I can see this being axed before it even gets to Leeds.