Launch BBC News: Studio B

[JF World]

Paul Royall editor of Six & Ten said on Newswatch that they needed to invest after ten years to upgrade technology as the studios were at the end of their life span. He defended it by saying people redecorate every ten years

[Steve in Pudsey]

Even if it was £10m, it's 4x more impressive than the £2.6m Downing Street briefing studio

[thegeek]

More broadly, to put £10-15m into perspective, BBC Radio 6 Music’s annual budget is £12m. The combined budget of BBC’s Radio 4 Extra, Radio 5 Live Sports Extra and Asian Network is £13m. This is roughly half the budget of a CBeebies or BBC Four-level channel. BBC One dramas typically come in at under £1m per hour episode. This is more than the entire cost of the 1997 BBC rebrand – idents, signage and all – even adjusted for inflation. In fact, most staggeringly, the upper £15m sum is roughly 5% of what the BBC sold the entirety of Television Centre (and its valuable inner London land) for.

Even accounting for costs of broadcasting tech, this would be an unreasonable amount of money for arguably unnecessarily upgrading a single news studio if the BBC were in good times. It is an unjustifiable and borderline disgusting amount of money to be spending when you are cutting hundreds of jobs. I’m all for new news sets and do indeed quite like the new set, but a 1999-style set-up would still be perfectly adequate for a national news programme and would be a fraction of the cost.

Capex v Opex, though. You can easily put together a business case for capital expenditure on physical infrastructure, especially if it's replacing something that's nearly a decade old and getting increasingly expensive to support. In some cases, kit from the original install may be longer supported by the manufacturer - in which case if it breaks, there'd be no option but to replace it anyway. The new assets will be expected to last another 8-10 years - so a big all-in-one spend then starts looking quite reasonably if you start looking at it for the number of hours it'll be seen on screen. You can't really go comparing it to the ongoing costs of, say, running a TV or radio network.

[Moz]

Can I just say that George nailed the closing walk! Didn’t seem awkward or over egged. Just a nice clean walk and a “let’s join our colleagues…” as if he’d been doing it all his life.

What a pro!

[Steve in Pudsey]

The interview with Chris Cook mentions "mezzanine screens", is that to say that the balcony area is screens?

[valley]

Interesting to read in that article that they’ve put in a vision mixer crate capable of UHD, and whilst it was not mentioned in the article the cameras are also UHD capable. Does feel like they’ve future-proofed for UHD-capture…

[Transmission]

The interview with Chris Cook mentions "mezzanine screens", is that to say that the balcony area is screens?

Yes, there's also a mention of them having a larger pixel pitch (so not quite as sharp looking) compared to the other screens, which makes sense as they won't be seen as close up.

[AaronTV]

There is no way on this earth that refurbishing a single studio cost £10 million. It would be an obscene amount of money to spend at a time when BBC News is having to make severe cuts.

I’d be surprised if the figure was over £2 million to be honest, it’s a large studio but certainly not enormous.

[Brekkie]

Exactly - quoted figures in these circumstances are usually always far higher than the actual cost, or cover so much more than what is being reported on. £10m perhaps for all the studios changing in Broadcasting House and all the regional studios seems more likely.

[harshy]

Can I just say that George nailed the closing walk! Didn’t seem awkward or over egged. Just a nice clean walk and a “let’s join our colleagues…” as if he’d been doing it all his life.

What a pro!

George got it spot on didn’t once look down.

[Moz]

So all the stuff “upstairs” in B is just on screens!

That’s cool.

[GraemeT]

What’s the point of pretending there’s a balcony with screens?

Doesn’t look like a usable space - why not have it fixed set?

[Moz]

What’s the point of pretending there’s a balcony with screens?

Doesn’t look like a usable space - why not have it fixed set?

Well there is a balcony. But if it is screens then the walls and doors and big Bs can be switched for something else if they want to. Makes it much more flexible.

[MrUdagawa]

Is the bit upstairs behind the catwalk a screen? If so I would put something more interesting in it than an ugly air vent.

[neonemesis]

Is the bit upstairs behind the catwalk a screen? If so I would put something more interesting in it than an ugly air vent.

It could well be that this was an intentional 'management of change'. Change things too radically, all in one go and there is a higher likelihood of emotional pushback.

Whether people actively noticed the detailing of the original studio B set or not, it had a look and feel which has been quite accurately preserved. The use of screens means that whenever the rebrand happens, or the space is required by a special event (elections etc) then that look and feel can be updated instantly. I wonder if they can also be set to green to enable a key for the AR set extensions that Chris Cook alludes to in his interview.

While all of us focus on what has changed and what is different, we don't spend as much time talking about what has been retained... Really important for getting people to accept and embrace change. We have kept:

- Red, grey and white colour scheme
- Formal desk with newsroom background
- Spiral stairs
- Look and feel of the previous exposed studio elements in the old B set
- Curved Catwalk
- Visible cameras

Looking forward to see how the look evolves over the next decade.