New Meridian, BBC South & South East Thread

Like an old mahogany sideboard you mean?

In a way, I'm surprised Ian Axton's even going back into journalism given his latest taste into politics but he's a brilliant newsreader.. good for Westcountry.

I'll be honest, I'm used to Perky 'Swing Your Pants' Parkin now but Fred and Sangeeta are still driving me mad!

Use to him ?! The medication is waring off then ? Helen James should return, she's is like the female version of Ian Axton, both very professional and a great raport between them

Agree with you there 100% of the way

BBC South East are opting out at 10:50pm on Sunday. The rest of the English regions are showing either The Super League Show or Great British Railway Journeys but BBC South East are showing The Airmail Orphan.

Don't suppose South Today were in their new set today? They seem to have been in the temporary one for a few weeks now..? One of the longest-taking regional set updates, surely?

The breakfast bulletins were still coming from the temporary set this morning - don't know about lunchtime but I assume the same.

I reckon they'll start using it after the Easter hols now.

Yea, I did catch the lunchtime bulletin - still in the temporary set. I guess starting a week tomorrow makes sense. It didn't take this long when N6 got the Barcos did it?! Eager anticipation and all that.

As people have suggested, they have the ability to activate remote camera control so they may be experimenting with that.

BBC South are a bit odd in that their facilities switched to widescreen without much disruption - they didn't have to decamp studio a few years back. They may be using the opportunity to test all the existing equipment and upgrade some of their older stuff. Even though most of it dates to the early 90s, quite a lot of their stuff will be ancient by TV standards. That is all assumption though.

Or, another suggestion is that Sally is being a diva at rehearsals and that's why it's taking so long

They've had it for quite a while and used to use it full time since the first break away from the 99 look (remember the days of no furniture at all just plasmas and a podium. You can see the remote heads here:



Not the big yellow "Caution this camera may move at any time" warning. Thats a fairly recent capture, yet they are not the camera heads they use now..


They did actually replace most of the gallery during this switch afaik, not a lot is "that" out of date that it needs 3 weeks, perhaps they are going full barco.. They do have the studio space for something special in there so who knows, or perhaps its the studio itself thats being refitted or perhaps even physically altered, they're one of the few to have a full height lighting rig and scenic doors.

They're having to have a new floor laid in the main studio, which is why the refit is taking longer than installation of a new set would. Older forumers may remember when Points West presented from their newsroom for three weeks (I think in about 2006) while they had a new floor laid. They were not changing their 2004 set, though there were some tweaks and it was completely relit. AFAIK there is no other major technical work being done, though they really ought to do their grid safety checks while they're out of the studio.

Southampton have had one or two weekends out of their main studio over the years and presented from Oxford on some of them. The widescreen switch was done without decamping to Oxford (actually Oxford switched to 16:9 that weekend too). Previous installation work at Southampton which meant a decamp to Oxford involved replacing the main video matrix. When the main gallery was refurbished, they stayed in Southampton too but used their 'presentation' gallery instead.

So once Soton have their new set, are there any regions left with anything remotely 1999 Lambie-Nairn? Oxford's set will look different to the rest of South Today, but as Oxford's set was changed in 2007 and has looked different for all that time anyway it's hardly much of a change...

Sounds like the situation Look East had for years. Norwich had the "Tefal" table whilst Cambridge had a desk. They only looked similar after Norwich moved back to a desk and a replica smaller set was built in the new Cambridge studios on the opposite side of the city.

Meridian Tonight Online as Amanda Piper puts it is making full use of the Breaking News site oh and check out Simon Parkins blog for the latest weather antics
And its good to see Meridian is updating the West of the regions website with a story that has been uploaded without it being featured on the program.