[Transmission]

A little preview of how Studio B will be looking in the new trail.

   
   

[James2001]

With the old ITN coverage, it's a shame they weren't able to have the big sprawling sets like the BBC did, with them only having access to comparably small studios, originally in Television House, then Wells Street when the BBC had big studios at Lime Grove and TVC. 64 and 66 look like it was just a camera and desk set up in the newsroom. It was only when they used the atrium at Gray's Inn Road they really had something on a BBC-esque scale, and with the VR/chromakey studios of the last 20 years they've made the studios look bigger than they were.

I guess ITN could theoretically have hired out a bigger studio from one of the ITV companies, but I don't know how logistically easy that would have been.

You can see the fish eye lens on the Feb 74 titles in that vid, and they did it in 83 as well, which made the studio look a lot bigger tha it was.

[lookoutwales]

Think it was for at least three elections (1983 and both in 1974) that they managed to create a two-level set in studio 1 at Wells Street - main set on the upper tier and production staff in the lower tier - simply by building a false floor with a hole in the middle.

This edition of The Lens, ITN's staff newspaper, goes into a lot of detail about their election operation in 1983
itn1955club.co.uk 

[James2001]

Will be interesting to see if this election night stream includes any of the TV-am coverage from 83 seeing as it was a joint production.

[Brekkie]

In hindsight an election nostalgia thread would have been a good idea - perhaps something to set up for Thursday if ITN are releasing quite a bit of archive footage. I assume this thread will close too and be replaced with one for the election night programmes themselves anyway.

Think it was for at least three elections (1983 and both in 1974) that they managed to create a two-level set in studio 1 at Wells Street - main set on the upper tier and production staff in the lower tier - simply by building a false floor with a hole in the middle.

This edition of The Lens, ITN's staff newspaper, goes into a lot of detail about their election operation in 1983
itn1955club.co.uk 

Interesting that according to that the TV-am slot ran from 6-10am that day, with no break before the return to ITN at 10am. I thought initially the 9.15am finish time of TV-am was because they needed the 10 minutes to switch back to the regions at 9.25am. I guess they may have been granted the extra time in exchange for ITN and the regions input into the breakfast slot.

For prior elections before breakfast TV I guess it might have been the one day every few years something might air in the breakfast slot?

[mark]

A little preview of how Studio B will be looking in the new trail.

This looks more or less how I hoped it would, and a big improvement on the local elections.

It looks from the press release that Reeta will be the only other presenter in the studio and the Jeremy Paxman/Mishal Husain/Andrew Neil role interviewing politicians in the studio has gone. To be fair, that's felt less clearly defined in the last couple of elections, with some political guests with that presenter and others at the main desk.

It'll be interesting to see if they integrate Jeremy Vine's Cardiff studio into the set virtually - the fact that they've announced he'll be in Cardiff suggests they might not.

[JMT1985]

With the old ITN coverage, it's a shame they weren't able to have the big sprawling sets like the BBC did, with them only having access to comparably small studios, originally in Television House, then Wells Street when the BBC had big studios at Lime Grove and TVC. 64 and 66 look like it was just a camera and desk set up in the newsroom. It was only when they used the atrium at Gray's Inn Road they really had something on a BBC-esque scale, and with the VR/chromakey studios of the last 20 years they've made the studios look bigger than they were.

I guess ITN could theoretically have hired out a bigger studio from one of the ITV companies, but I don't know how logistically easy that would have been.

You can see the fish eye lens on the Feb 74 titles in that vid, and they did it in 83 as well, which made the studio look a lot bigger tha it was.

Just to give some perspective - when ITN were based in Wells Street (1969 to 1991) - they only had one main studio, which was 2,000 Sq Ft in space with a smaller 700 Sq Ft studio - so they literally had to cram as much into such a small space - wide angle lenses and a carefully constructed set ensured ITN's election nights from Wells Street were decent, but could never match the near 11,000 Sq Ft size of Studio TC1 at BBC Television Centre, or even the other four medium sized studios which were 8,000 Sq Ft each in floor space.

In 1991 when ITN moved into Grays Inn, they then had two slightly larger main studios in the basement, both are the same size, around 2,500 Sq Ft floor space each, so only slightly bigger than their main Wells Street studio - this is the reason why for 1997 and 2001 they used the vast atrium of Grays Inn for their election studio, and even in 2005, with VR backdrop to the set was the atrium.

[Brekkie]

Is Jeremy in the news studio in Cardiff (so a mix of real screens and AR presumably) or in a virtual studio there? Presumably both BBC Wales and S4C will be coming from Central Square - think we've had one election night from there for the last Senedd elections. Suspect the BBC Scotland and BBC Wales coverage will look far grander than Studio B with a few purple logos.

Do we know where C4 are broadcasting their coverage from?

[JMT1985]

Is Jeremy in the news studio in Cardiff (so a mix of real screens and AR presumably) or in a virtual studio there? Presumably both BBC Wales and S4C will be coming from Central Square - think we've had one election night from there for the last Senedd elections. Suspect the BBC Scotland and BBC Wales coverage will look far grander than Studio B with a few purple logos.

Do we know where C4 are broadcasting their coverage from?

My guess is Riverside TV - they were there for 2019, and the studio performed well for them and it is a decent size, 6,500 Sq Ft.

[TVenthusiasm]

A little preview of how Studio B will be looking in the new trail.

Also at the start of the promo, a glimpse of green wall can been seen between Clive and Laura - most likely a green screen area for new virtual reality elements on election night. Will be interesting to see how that gets used