[JMT1985]

When they moved to Television Centre, they had a change to the audience platform.

Back in The London Studios, their Studio 1 had a very distinct audience platform, part balcony supplemented by additional movable seating, to make around 640 audience capacity

Studio TC1 at Television Centre even though is much larger than Studio 1 at TLS was, just doesn't have that large audience seating, as we found out from the behind the scenes programme they use under 500 capacity seating, which makes it look smaller on screen, and less of a run down for Ant and Dec to do each week.

When it was built LWT’s studio 1 was promoted as the largest studio in the UK with permanent seating. Note the careful choice of words there.

That is right, as Studio 1 when it opened in 1974 had a permanent balcony seating area, which was unique for a television studio at the time. This meant Studio 1 had a very distinct look for it's audience platform, which was seen on so many LWT shows such as Blind Date, Game for a Laugh, An Audience With etc.  

That audience structure remained unchanged, right up to the time the studio closed down. 

TC1 wanted to provide a similar look to it's audience platform, but for some reason, they can only provide a smaller audience than Studio 1 had - as I said, Studio 1 could accommodate audiences of up to near 640 people, whereas TC1 can only go up to a maximum of 550, which Ant and Dec don't use, their audience number of just short of 500. 

TC1 is also much larger than Studio 1, larger by over 2,000 Sq Ft in size, but has a smaller audience platform which is noticeable on screen - well noticeable to people like us who have in interest these details.