[James2001]

A lot less footage online from historic ITN elections sadly. Though of course the BBC elections having been repeated on several occasions has a lot to do with that. Apart from the 4 hours of 1983 coverage I linked to yesterday, there's only short clips of the 87 and 92 elections and nothing from 1979 and earlier.

When I have seen clips of their coverage of the 59. 64 and 66 elections, I'm suprised how poor the quality is, even though they survive, at least partly, on videotape- looks like they were put through a not brilliant 405>625 conversion at some point, probably quite early on with primitive standards converters, and presumably the original 405 tapes no longer exist to do a better conversion from. I almost wonder if it was an optical conversion.

[mark]

2010 was the last time ITV did anything more than slight tweaks to the regular news set. I really hope this year won't be the fourth general election to look more or less the same.

1997 was my favourite year in terms of studio design - BBC, ITV and Sky all really pushing the boat out.

[James2001]

Sadly it looks like the BBC's just likely to be the regular news set, albeit possibly with different backdrops on the screens, from 2019 on seeing as they're just using the BH studios, the days of big, fancy bespoke sets are likely over.

ITN using their atrium in 1997 and 2001 was impressive, a shame they've never done it since.

[mark]

Sadly it looks like the BBC's just likely to be the regular news set, albeit possibly with different backdrops on the screens, from 2019 on seeing as they're just using the BH studios, the days of big, fancy bespoke sets are likely over.

ITN using their atrium in 1997 and 2001 was impressive, a shame they've never done it since.

Sadly I think you're right - although I'm excited about Sky using the Monday Night Football studio this year. I suspect it'll look better than what they built especially in 2019 and still cost less.

The ironic thing is that it's easy for ITV's usual studio is the easiest to turn into something that looks completely different - the virtual atrium in 2005 and what they did in 2010 are good examples of that. Yet they choose not to.

ITV's 2001 atrium set was more impressive than the 1997 one overall but, in my view, let down by the fact that the main presenter shot was essentially just Jonathan Dimbleby sitting in front of a salmon-coloured blind.

[James2001]

Sixty years of Swing presented by Peter Snow- this went out on BBC Parliament (back when they still made programmes like this) back in 2015 covering past BBC election coverage, was a very good show, a lot of effort put in for something only screened on that channel, talking heads and everything:

www.youtube.com 

Not that the clips from 1970 and 2001 are taken straight from the BBC Parliament screenings, complete with DOGs!

And a similar show, Swing Time, from BBC2 in 1997, this one covers ITN's elections as well:

www.youtube.com 

Can see the poor quality on the 64 and 66 ITN election coverage (there's some clips from ITN's 59 coverage in that show as well, but only in telerecording form)

Also has rehearsal footage for the 1997 election- that took place in February 1996 according to the captions. So the BBC were well prepared in advance and had the set ready that far ahead.

And this clip from another show (on ITV) from 2015 has some of the videotaped footage from 1959 (though cropped to 16:9):

www.youtube.com 

[Stooky Bill]

Sadly it looks like the BBC's just likely to be the regular news set, albeit possibly with different backdrops on the screens, from 2019 on seeing as they're just using the BH studios, the days of big, fancy bespoke sets are likely over.

That's kind of the point in having a studio like Studio B with lots of screens and lots of space - it's versatile. The backdrops are the sets, but they're not physical sets but digital graphics.

They're not going to just turn up in the studio all set up for the 10 o clock news, it'll be a specific Election set in the same studio.

One of the main reasons election programmes had big sets in the past was because they put a lot of the journalists and those collating the results on the set too. It wasn't that necessary back them but even less so now

[chris]

I totally understand the financial decision but it does lose some of the grandness of election night. 2019 using “the whole of NBH” didn’t quite have the same impact as a big election centre.

[eggsontoast]

I totally understand the financial decision but it does lose some of the grandness of election night. 2019 using “the whole of NBH” didn’t quite have the same impact as a big election centre.

Bizarrely Channel 4 end up with the largest election studio because they haven’t historically used their own ITN studio and have chosen to hire from Pinewood, Studioworks or most recently Riverside.

[newsjunkie]

Bizarrely Channel 4 end up with the largest election studio because they haven’t historically used their own ITN studio and have chosen to hire from Pinewood, Studioworks or most recently Riverside.

I hear they are using a different studio this time, only a couple of weeks or so before we find out.

[Stuart]

I notice that the desk extension for the GE is already back in Studio B. I assume they've started doing rehearsals.