[bbctvtechop]

Apparently it’s LBH now, not NBH.

LBH is London Broadcasting House (as opposed to, say, Cardiff Broadcasting House) and refers to the whole complex of Old Broadcasting House, New Broadcasting House and Peel Wing.

NBH is still New Broadcasting House but it's less relevant to specify which part of LBH you mean now given that the huge majority of London based output comes from the one building, and staff know their way round.

Perhaps they should start adopting the WS concept of "hard posts", would certainly avoid situations like these.


They should already know what time the various feeds and opt-outs go in and out, what's stopping them planning around that?

Exactly. They ARE hard posts (technically, I think, soft posts, as in they don't need to be to the second but within about 15 seconds or so). WS radio when I was there - possibly still the case - had 13 hard posts most hours. And you had to hit them as your studio got cut off from the network as part of an automatic switch whether you liked it or not.

However, whichever way you do it is hard to achieve.

- Playing a VT, you need to back time it perfectly, which really just moves the post earlier by a few minutes, meaning you need to do one of the below still anyway, and puts it at an awkward time to count to.

- Presenter fills, you need enough script/ad libbed material to do so properly. Plus on TV you have someone counting in your ear constantly (radio presenters just stare at the clock while talking).

- Live interview, you need to guess your guest's answer to the last question pretty accurately so they finish answering it between 10 and 20 seconds before the post, leaving enough time for the presenter to thank and wrap up. Pretty impossible to do with MoP guests, slightly easier with trained correspondents who can be counted down by production staff, or at least take the hints from noises or phrases the presenter is making/saying.