The Sky News Thread

How are these home setups powered, does anyone know? Do those lights and equipment require a generator of some kind, or can they somehow operate off a domestic supply?

No, can all be run off a domestic power supply. It really isn't very much at all:

- four LED Dedolights at 40w each
- a fairly standard domestic television although running on custom picture settings to make it acceptable on camera
- the LiveU and the other networking equipment would barely draw more than a regular laptop (much of it designed to be run off a camera crew's V-lok batteries in the field)
- the 3x iPads for prompt/return/local camera output will draw barely more than 30w in total when charging
- the camera will perhaps draw 30-50w

Running a kettle to boil a coffee in the morning is going to use more than all that combined!

They could easily install a single 1000w UPS and run the entire setup (maybe excluding the television) but it would unlikely to be considered necessary, as there will always be a standby presenter in a hard-wired local studio if there is an issue on the remote presenter end - whether that be loss of power, loss of network connection, or another issue.

That's a very minor lighting set-up. You could probably run it on VLok rechargeable batteries. LED lighting of that level takes less electricity than a washing machine or a kettle.

Never work with children, animals and bad weather!

Always strikes me how far away the autocue actually is from the presenter’s seat, far further back than you’d perhaps assume from watching.

I see a ubiquiti hotspot. Do they run a separate internet line or if the home line fast enough a line straight to the router? I’m sure the LiveU has all the SIM cards needed to operate by itself and the iPads have them as well as a fail over?

I imagine they use the home line, wired from the ISP router to the Ubiquiti hardware which then feeds the iPads. Not sure if there’d be a iPad SIM failover but it’s possible. You could ask the Sky News Tech Team on Twitter, they might be able to clarify what I am inferring from conversations and pictures.

Is it really necessary for them to have "Get a first look at tomorrow's papers in the Press Preview" scrolling along the ticker as a "News Alert" at 22.45 during the Press Preview?
Use the ticker for actual news if you must have one.

They've been doing that for ages. Remember there are two editions at 10:30 and 11:30, and the 11:30 is repeated overnight.
Although in the current climate why anybody would want to depress themselves with tomorrow's doom and gloom headlines before bedtime is beyond me, when you can do that for yourself standing in the newsagents tomorrow morning... But I digress.

I know they used to do it during the 10pm news to promote it coming up at 10.30, but it seems now they have it up during the paper preview itself (without a time being advertised).

Yeah, I'm also surprised that people want to stay up to watch journalists giving their opinions. But I suppose the ratings must be OK for them to keep doing it every night.

Well I think it was mentioned on here the other day about the ticker tape being ‘permanently yellow’ it’s almost like ‘the boy who cried wolf’ situation when there’s actual breaking news. You don’t notice it as much.

Perhaps, the ticker tape needs a new colour - maybe a keep the ticker white but have a blue colour to ‘highlight’ such alerts, such a programme highlights/analysis then leaving yellow for actually breaking news. And maybe the mobile notifications could follow a similar system.

Yeah, almost every little thing is 'breaking news'. This morning, something minor that the health secretary said in his interview with Kay was 'breaking news' and it stayed on the screen for ages. It wasn't even news, just a quote.

Even the government briefings have 'breaking news' on the screen the whole time. These are scheduled events and 'breaking' should refer to unplanned developing events of significance.
It would be better on live events like the briefings to do what CNN does and put 'happening now'.

People really would take more notice if 'breaking news' was used more sparingly and not over so many minor things.