[DTV]

A few days behind, but I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of some of the temporary sets we're seeing at the minute. The Midlands Today set-up is certainly better - in both design and build quality - than some of the permanent sets we've seen in smaller regions. Though not yet topping the Sportsday temporary set which manages to be both a good set in its own right and have a nicer backdrop than the permanent set it replaced!

[London Lite]

They managed to squeeze Politics Midlands into the temporary set.

[Lester]

Any news on what is to come with the new studio? I read in another thread that all regions will have the same boxy studio?

[Phil]

It sounds like Midlands Today will be in the temporary set until at least early January, according to a post Shefali put on Instagram.

[Former Member 406]

I've been wondering whether EMT and MT will actually both have the on-air debut of their new sets at the same time?

Even though Nottingham de-camped to a temp set before Birmingham did, maybe that's because their studio needs more doing to it (e.g. technical upgrades etc) whereas for Birmingham it's literally just the change of set?

[John]

Apart from the technical upgrades, why does it take so long to build a new set? I remember Look East even with the cramped conditions of All Saints Green, Norwich would do it over a weekend.

[DTV]

Apart from the technical upgrades, why does it take so long to build a new set?

Well it really it depends on the set. Twenty years ago when sets were just a couple of flats, a desk and a rear projection screen, you could install them in a weekend because it was just a matter of placing the pre-built items in the studio correctly. These days you have a lot of components that require extra stages - videowalls or multi-screen set ups require supporting frames to be installed and need to be calibrated to ensure a seemless image; colour-change LED lighting also requires calibration and often has to be intricately arranged within lightboxes.

The longer construction time is often compounded by, as you say, coinciding set builds with technical upgrades, but also it has become more common to undertake extensive pilots with new sets to ensure everything is working correctly and presenters are familiar with any new presenting styles.

[Mike]

I'm not all that clued up on LED screen technology
twitter.com 

But this tweet shows the exposed window of the Midlands Today studio from the newsroom, since 2012 this has been covered with a curtain - my question is what are those things behind the window?

[DTV]

I'm not all that clued up on LED screen technology

But this tweet shows the exposed window of the Midlands Today studio from the newsroom, since 2012 this has been covered with a curtain - my question is what are those things behind the window?

That does look suspiciously like the back of an LED videowall, which hopefully confirms that all regions are going to get the full mini-nationals set-up. If this is the case, I expect many will be surprised by the size of some of the regional studios once the rear projection screens are removed - as the picture shows, the LEDs can go very close to the wall.

A bit of a shame though that Birmingham are still insisting on covering up their newsroom window. An actual backdrop adds so much depth to any studio, but particularly one as tiny as Birmingham's. To my knowledge, three regions have actual newsroom windows, all currently blocked off - such a waste.

One odd thing that I do particularly hope for the English regions sets is that they are going to have soft sets as standard. Everytime that they try and impose desks on the regions, it is only a matter of time before they try and replace the desk with a soft set - often of inferior quality. Just give a sofa and coffee table to start!

[Mike]

I think a lot of them are pretty much as close to the fire lane as they can reasonably get at present. Not sure what the standard width of a fire lane is but the Birmingham studio has 3 doors, one is on the window itself, the other is on what would be the right hand wall facing the window from within the studio itself and the other is the 'scene dock' door, a double office door which runs into the corridor that runs alongside the studio. Along with 2 wallboxes to plug cameras into.

The window being obscured was two-fold, people working can be distracting to the viewer (they did try and mask it in 2010 but it made it look like someone was burning toast) and in this day and age of agile working and blended working, the newsroom and office would look quite barren.