[Stuart]

Which English Region's studio is actually the smallest (and therefore the template)? Birmingham maybe (hence it being one of the first to change)?

Hull is slightly smaller than Birmingham, but also significantly longer - Hull is 13.5 x 7.2m (~97 sqm), while Birmingham is roughly 11 x 9m (~99 sqm). If the identical set thing is to be believed (which I doubt), this would mean that it'd have to fit in a space of 11m x 7.2m (~79 sqm) - which would be ludicrously small. The Washington studio is a similar floorspace (~80 sqm), but is virtually square so not as constrained with regards to depth. It'd also be quite a low set owing to Salford's set having an unusually low ceiling.

A set of that size would occupy just half of the Southampton, Bristol and Plymouth studios, as well as less than a third of Newscastle's. A major waste of space. It also wouldn't fit in the current Salford studio, owing to its weird shape.

Plymouth always seem to delete the memo about standard set design, and 'go rogue' from the start.  

The current incarnation (from the 2015 HD refurbishment) was changed after a while to include a red screen behind the presenters to make the head shots look more 'BBC Newsy'.  Unfortunately, this meant that when using the winter/night time background mode, the nice reflection effect of the city lights on the water were completely lost.  Such a waste.  


(This pic has lights for 'winter daytime background mode' as last night's evening/late programmes were live from Newquay rather than the studio, so I didn't have another one to hand)

EDIT: This is the slightly darker background setting this morning. You can still just about see the light reflection effect still visible through the red barrier.