I just don't see the attraction in a picture quality which pretty much shows the average skin tone as grey.
To be fair EMI 2001s (the work horse colour camera in BBC studios in the 70s and into the 80s) were, if anything, worse. They generated very distinctive pale flesh tones. You can still spot EMI 2001 pictures a mile off.
In total it must have been about 3 minutes from the alarm started before they came off the air, which is a long time to stay in the building should an actual fire had happened.
I would be shocked if TLS doesn't have a multi-stage alarm system. If there was a fire in the actual studio, or between the studio and outside, of course you would evacuate immediately. But if there's a suspected fire in a completely different part of the building, with no risk of it spreading to the studio in the time it would take to get off air cleanly and evacuate if it was confirmed and intensified, there's no need to do anything.
Without knowing the nature of the alarm and the procedures in place, there's no way to know if it was a long time or not.
In total it must have been about 3 minutes from the alarm started before they came off the air, which is a long time to stay in the building should an actual fire had happened.
I would be shocked if TLS doesn't have a multi-stage alarm system. If there was a fire in the actual studio, or between the studio and outside, of course you would evacuate immediately. But if there's a suspected fire in a completely different part of the building, with no risk of it spreading to the studio in the time it would take to get off air cleanly and evacuate if it was confirmed and intensified, there's no need to do anything.
Without knowing the nature of the alarm and the procedures in place, there's no way to know if it was a long time or not.
AFAIK the 'offices' and the studio block are built separately but connected (I guess) by lift and staircases, along with cabling ducts. Guessing that if a fire broke out in one of the other, the other would be protected somewhat? I'm not sure how fireproof/fire-resistant studios are though...
I'm not sure how fireproof/fire-resistant studios are though...
Even if studio's had their own requirements for fire-resistance, you wouldn't want to be in one when the rest of the building is on fire. Every door between fire zones in a "to-spec" building will have a rated fire-resistance time. Every cable duct will be fire sealed. The little furry / rubber strips you get on door edges - they expand under heat to seal doors to prevent smoke from travelling through. It doesn't matter if it was built as one building, or one hundred, the same rules apply.
All fire procedures in the UK are now risk assessment based. That means nobody but the people who work inside a particular building can predict with any certainty their response to a suspected fire (apart from they aim to get everybody out before a risk to their lives exists).
As a completely different example, but that more people will be familiar with, think of a large shopping mall - a suspected fire in one shop will no mean the entire mall is evacuated immediately. It may not even mean that shop is evacuated.
In total it must have been about 3 minutes from the alarm started before they came off the air, which is a long time to stay in the building should an actual fire had happened.
I would be shocked if TLS doesn't have a multi-stage alarm system. If there was a fire in the actual studio, or between the studio and outside, of course you would evacuate immediately. But if there's a suspected fire in a completely different part of the building, with no risk of it spreading to the studio in the time it would take to get off air cleanly and evacuate if it was confirmed and intensified, there's no need to do anything.
Without knowing the nature of the alarm and the procedures in place, there's no way to know if it was a long time or not.
There's no need to be shocked, the London TV Centre does indeed have multi-stage alarm warning system. Once the decision is made to evacuate - the entire is site is to be evacuated, not part of it. The fire brigade will turn up automatically.
The three main production studios have fire vents in their ceilings, are to be operated with the studio doors closed to prevent 'air' from feeding any fire, and all the roof steel work is enclosed with fire resistant material.
Last edited by bluecortina on 20 October 2014 6:49pm
I was about to ask how it works in buildings like TLS when a fire alarm is activated and if the whole building is activated, but the last few posts seem to have answered my question.
I'm assuming the pres department isn't linked in any way to the studios where Lorraine comes from? If they were (hypothetically) would there just remain a skeleton crew, or would there be some sort of 'emergency tape' procedure?
ITV's Southern Transmission Centre moved to Chiswick some time ago, so they wouldn't have been affected. Under the old arrangements I would imagine that the Northern Transmission Centre in Leeds would have played out standby programmes to the whole network until such time as TLS was able to get back to normal.
I've been to TLS three times in the last year to watch Celebrity Chase being recorded... at no time were we given any instruction on where to go in the event of the alarms going off or even told where the fire exits were. If the way we came in was blocked off due to fire/smoke, there are course fire exits on the studio floor but this would have been covered by the set although of course there are fire lanes around the studio. Completely different when I went to Television Centre, first thing they told us was what to do if the alarms go off and where the fire exits were in the studios, just amazed that at TLS there is no instruction!