New BBC Singapore studio

You are forgetting the costs of this is probably why they didn't go down that route, its not just the kit but also the automation software and the kit that comes with. Still cheaper to have cameras on sticks/peds and a decent vision mixer.

On Business Live, they usually go to Singapore for the 'view on Asia' due to the studio move they now go to Hong Kong, makes me wonder why they didn't choose to present Newsday from another Asian bureau instead of being solely from London.

Does Hong Kong have the resources to actually produce the Newsday contribution though, or is it just a stand up position fed direct to London.

Hong Kong is just a stand up position. There's nowhere outside of the UK as complex as the new Singapore bureau, and only Washington that approaches the old one.

Bail's point on cost is key - no way that robotics, or even the graphics and automation used in W1, would be available in a bureau - even Singapore which anchors World for an hour a day.

The vision mixers are amazing people, but their real jobs are producers. As you could see on Sharanjit's video upthread, the whole show is run by 2 people. Singapore is very shoe-string (although the new office is far nicer), and you might not have spotted but the BBC isn't exactly flush for cash! Any money GNL don't spend is pumped back into the BBC to offset against the license fee. There were other issues that meant we had to move from the old bureau, I won't detail them in public, but having a nice new studio wouldn't have been the only reason.

The output has to shut down for two weeks for a couple of factors -- a lot of the more expensive equipment has been moved from the old place, it's not new stuff, so you couldn't dual run. The main reason though is that (as you can see) it's a new set, and thus a far more complex program. It takes time to pilot and learn how to run the systems, and the people doing that are the ones who would normally be making ABR and Singapore side of Newsday.

Washington recently had a bit of an upgrade when the studio moved to HD, I don't see any changes there until the 2020 election at least.

I believe there should be a quick behind the scenes view tomorrow (perhaps during newsday? And on the facebook page), Rico was doing a quick piece earlier. They did one in the gallery yesterday.

BBC GNL seems to want to up its profile in, and coverage of, Asia and this Bureau is obviously one of the major steps towards achieving that. Could we be looking at the possibility of more programmes coming from Singapore in future? Perhaps even shifting the Overnights to Singapore as well?

I realise that currently its very 'shoe-string' as you put it in Singapore, but could this new facility technically produce Newsday independently of London if the need arose?

Thanks again derek your insight is greatly appreciated.

The old facility could and did produce Asia Business Report independently, so I don't see why not.

It would scare the hell out of me. There's a massive difference between the formulaic ABR with 3 cameras like at Shaw and something as long as newsday.

It's not "can it work", it's "can it work reliably".

People are wondering why the old studio had to shut down. Another reason is that it's a new studio so Rico and Sharanjiyt need to get used to the set up as do the background staff and presumably rehearse the new format.

If you remember, presenters disappeared from TVC while they set up NBH so the presenters can get used to the new facilities but there is the possibility in London to do them side by side because of the amount of staff. It's not possible in Singapore.

The new catwalk in Singapore and a look at what looks to be the new branding for Newsday.

Love that backdrop.

The graphics resemble the 2002 BBC World Cream/red look in my opinion.

They didn't have an update from Singapore during Newsday today as far as I can tell - they did say they'd get daily updates ahead of the relaunch.

As an aside, how long is an ad break on BBC World News? After Asia Business Report the UK feed went straight to a UK-centric headline summary and then into the Tony Blair story, which included a pretty long report - all of this was probably around four minutes long and I imagine that if there was supposed to be a world headline summary before Sport Today they missed it as they didn't reach the end of the report - they needed to start Sport Today so just faded the report out into the titles. Also, I note that the UK keeps its own ticker from midnight for a while, despite changing for the shorter World ticker at some point overnight - is there any particular reason for this?