Interview with Matt Frei on his new US job

I'm not sure whether the Washington bureau has a full gallery, and even if it did, the output would surely have to go via London to be transmitted to the world? CNN works like that. Even though the output may be coming from London or Hong Kong, it is actually going via the Atlanta gallery, who add the titles, stings, vamps, graphics and play reports. The London (and Hong Kong) gallery is very small, and all they do is control cameras, lights in the studio, and the editorial stuff, printing off scripts, changing the running order etc. The presenter has to listen to both galleries at once, and even has to speak a few seconds early to enable the output to arrive in Atlanta via satellite and still be in synchronisation with the rest of the channel. The Atlanta gallery is online all day long.

From what I gather, WORLD NEWS TODAY(7 pm et. , 00:00 gmt)and the other WNT(10pm et., 03:00 gmt) will come from Washington DC. BBC WORLD and BBC AMERICA have team up. They will both provide the budget for the program. That includes hiring staff, editors, producers and camara people. BBC AMERICA is forking a sizable chuck of the bill. Why can't the rest of those hours stay anchor from DC and Singapore with Asia today and Asia Business Repoprt comming from there? At 5 am uk time then the European breakfest starts. Let News 24 do their own thing.

The Washington studio can run completely independently, although may need to be fed through TVC to be transmitted as BBC World. In fact, I believe Washington has the capability to take over emergency broadcasting in the UK if there were a major incident.

The idea for World running overnight from Washington is an interesting one, the only lives overnight tend to be to America although there are also currently studio guests I would suggest it would be a more lively programme. But this should most definetly be broadcast on and not as an alternative to N24, adding another 5 hours broadcasting with full gallery to a negligable audience is not a good way to cut costs.

Washington does have a gallery (quite a nice one actually), but no where the size of the main control room at TVC. Indeed, the only thing the director does in DC is control lighting and camera shots. Everything else is added by London. World would like to make the bureau run 24/7, but no word on that as of yet. I dont envisage seeing N8 or N9 shutting down so the major bureaus can take over for broadcasting. If anything, they'll both be running at the same time.

Whilst the Washington operation has more facilities than most other BBC operations outside the UK - I'd be very surprised if it didn't come through TV Centre, and also surprised if it didn't come through either the News 24 or BBC World galleries (with the latter more likely).

Whilst Washington can handle some local live remote contributions, and have a decent US newsgathering operation, they don't have access and facilities for the range of live outside sources and agency feeds etc. that the BBC News operation in London has. Trying to co-ordinate multiple reverse feeds from London to Washington would be more complicated (and a recipe for too many standards conversion from US 60Hz and European 50Hz formats there and back) than just having a single reverse feed for a plasma etc.

Be interesting to see - but I suspect it will work similarly to CNN and the existing BBC World US shows - rather than following the Al Jazeera model.

Good warm-up for the new WNT, Philipa Thomas hosting a BBC News special from Washington for Bush's address to his nation.