I would like to take this opportunity to say a special thank you to Mr George Alagiah for taking time out straight after his news broadcast to talk to us and allowing us to have a photo opportunity with him as this made our visit a very special memorable visit. Thank you to Nick Davey for also taking time to shows around the studio and also giving us an insight into what he does and a talk on the history of the BBC and lastly thanks also to the lady that works with Nick who talked to us briefly about the work she was doing.
Nick Davey and a co worker, who we talked too
I was excited about going to see the BBC as I couldn't believe my luck that this was one of the companies we had on our list to visit. We all stood outside on Wood Lane and had time to take a few pictures of the studio. Strangely I had seen the image on TV many times of the outside, somehow the Street I was stood on didn't match up with my image in my head. We went inside and waited for Nick Davey who is an ex-student at Glyndwr University. We were all handed our visitors' name badges, had a quick run through of the dos and don'ts and then given time to go and browse in the shop before it closed.
These are both photos of the view from the balcony
After going through a maze of corridors we headed outside onto the balcony, and we were given the history of the BBC.It initially started before the Second World War, but was later pulled during the war because of its expense. Television was relatively new and was split between Alexandra Palace and Lime Grove.The Wood Lane site was the first one purpose built television media site in the world ,the BBC also built the transmitter network in Britain. The operations were spread so far around that it took 28 years to close Lime Grove. Lime Grove was also a place of experimentation with things that the BBC didn't think that would necessarily continue, such as Breakfast TV and Newsnight. It wasn't until 1988 that lime Grove actually closed and then the site was demolished. We were then shown the different parts of the buildings which was added on in the 60s, 80s and 1990s was the main reception area which we had come in through. In 1995 the BBC had a high usage web server, strangely enough it was before the time of you Tube and Google. The BBC was bombed in 2001 -a taxi was parked outside the studio on Saturday night which later exploded, this then caused the BBC to be knocked out for approximately 2 hours.We were shown where TC1 is, which is one of the biggest studios in West London and is where Strictly Come Dancing is filmed.
View of studios from Wood Lane
The examples of these are tonal which is a sub headline, contextualising story and timeline in a compressed form.We were told in detail about what software is used and the image bank they use, Eyestock. We were informed about and how they have extended their licence for protecting them against possible illegal consequences.There was a chance for us all to have questions and answer session as we went along.
Sometimes there is a mix of stills and video in the news, 3-D is also something that is used.
Nobody can ever predict what News we are going to hear whether it's going to be good or bad and there used to be an old quote that was used in the business which was "bad news is our business and business is good".
The timescales they have two work to are very tight due to news being a 24 hours a day seven days a week job and workers can have an average of 2 to1and a half hrs to prepare graphics.
There used to be assembly points around the building which were coloured red, orange, green and blue and they were designed to help aid people to find their way around the vast size of the building, but apparently it really didn't work. There was quite a lot for us to take in; we got introduced to another lady who was working there with Nick and she very kindly told us about the work she was doing with the software. We were given the opportunity to go outside to see the Doctor Who telephone box and to take pictures of it.
The Dr Who Tardis
The surprise of the evening was when we where taken into the news studio, Mr George Alagiah had just finished reading the six o'clock news, he gives us all a warm welcome and shook everybody's hands. He very kindly talked to us, allowed us to have a photo opportunity with him and then invited us all to sit in his news reading chair and have photos taken.
The group photo was taken By Mr Stuart Edwards one of our tutors at Glyndwr
The infamous news desk
Studio gear
This was our first day in London and we hadn't long arrived and got settled into the hotel. It was an excellent end to the day and I had learnt a lot through our visit to the BBC, my eyes were opened to watching the news in a different way! I hadn't before realised what work actually does go on behind the scenes in regards to how things are put together such as graphics etc.
Nigh time photos of the BBC studio
A few days after our trip I has a surprise text message to say that our trip to the BBC studio had been in the local paper with a photo of us all.
This is the article from the paper
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