KICK OFF The teams in Salford are experts on delivering shows smoothly, while adapting to issues in the moment
talented and flexible; enabling them to offer these complex solutions in any of our studios. Whether it’s our 12,500 sq ft HQ or one of our little baby studios, we’re prepared to set up a virtual studio at any moment. Covid-19 was extraordinary for a number of obvious reasons, but from a professional point of view, we were never closed – we had to stay open. One of the things we did with our virtual studio was produce BBC Bitesize , for parents who were going nuts with their kids stuck at home. With this sudden demand for educational content, we were left trying to work out how best to deliver. The virtual studio was ideal for this sort of content, and we also brought in new technologies like motion capture to create characters such as Clogs – a robot classroom assistant to help presenters with delivering
One of the stories I always tell is how, when we moved to the world of virtual studios for the BBC in 2019, we couldn’t initially afford to dedicate a whole studio just to MOTD – we also needed to make an episode of Blue Peter in the middle of that week. We needed to be able to take the conventional studio we were using for Blue Peter – which involves bands, music, sticky-back plastic, etc – have that go live on a Thursday night, and turn it all around quickly enough that by Saturday lunchtime we could do a live show called Football Focus , then Final Score , then MOTD . Then we’d take all of that incredible virtual technology out and turn the studio back into a conventional one again. The task of building up the ability and skills of the team to achieve that was an enormous challenge, but one that ultimately made them incredibly
lockdown teaching programmes for the BBC. Another thing I will say, which comes part and parcel of opening a new facility of this scale, was the lack of staff and infrastructure. At the Television Centre in London, we had decades’ worth of both those things, so when you do your first show in a brand-new studio complex that’s never been used before, you’re naturally going to be missing quite a few things. As you can imagine, there were many trips to Maplin during those first few months, to buy cables and other bits and pieces. Are there any technical trends the team at Dock 10 are paying particular attention to? We have a team at Dock 10 that’s dedicated to innovation – it’s the same team that brought virtual studios into our market. So we’ve seen that adoption of virtual studio for sports and news, but we believe passionately that they can be used for entertainment shows too. This will allow us to continue broadcasting great-looking shows at affordable prices. Within that virtual transition, you effectively
» Then we ΄ d take all of that incredible virtual technology out and turn the studio back into a conventional one again «
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