About 15 of us arrived at BBC South between 6.00 and 6.15 pm, as instructed, and were taken down into the bowels of the building, to a room with a large television monitor, rows of chairs and welcome refreshments. The windows gave onto a courtyard garden – very pleasant until a train rumbled by on its way into the tunnel under Southampton.
We had come to watch the local news programme, South Today, with Sally Taylor and our hostess roughly explained how live broadcasting works. We were each given an order of procedure, which didn’t make any sense at all to me at the start. It contained provisional start and finish times of each item of news, as they knew it at the time of printing earlier in the afternoon, with timing in minutes and seconds. They also have to cope with merging the Oxford area halfway through.
As the programme went on air we were talked through and soon realised that it had changed radically at the last minute and was being manipulated very skilfully to accommodate more breaking news. We were able to hear the instructions Sally was receiving in her earpiece while she was speaking, but she didn’t show that anything was interrupting her flow of speech. There were also visual signals from the Floor Manager in the studio and Sally was reading from the cue monitor at the same time. They overran by 20 seconds at one point and had to scrabble that back before the end of the programme, letting the presenters know how many seconds they had until the end of each item of news. At one point, Roger who reports on sporting events, had sat down on the couch and was blocking part of the screen showing a picture of a butterfly and a caption underneath. We heard the voice in his ear ask him to move to his left and he casually did so, perfectly naturally.
The whole 30 minutes passed in a maelstrom of sound as far as I was concerned and when it finished I felt quite punch drunk. I suppose they become used to it, but I have nothing but admiration for the way they remain so natural and fluent.
We then proceeded to visit the gallery, after a wait while an extra interview on the Chinese earthquake got under way for another news programme. This had obviously not been scheduled when our visit was arranged. The gallery is where all the monitors are located and the studio is directed from here. This was fascinating; there were so many keyboards and banks and banks of switches. The chap in charge talked us through what was happening on screen in the interview and how it was being directed from the floor of the studio.
Once the interview was completed we were able to go into the studio itself. It seemed smaller than on the TV but the tables, chairs and couches were instantly recognisable. There we were given more details of how the cameras are worked, sometimes remotely, and where images are projected for each topic.
All too soon our tour was completed and I for one left with more understanding of this area of television and a great admiration for all who work in the hectic world of live TV, in particular the presenters who are up there in full view and have to cope with whatever is thrust at them.
Thank you once again, Julie, for arranging such an interesting visit for us.
Sue
