Slick, US city-style news presentation, live elements in every show, “the most advanced newsroom in Europe”, state-of-the-art transmission facilities. London News Network (LNN) is promising a lot.
When it delivers in January, around 11 million people living in the London area will have been given the kind of comprehensive local news operation they have always needed.
London News Network is a joint venture between LWT and Carlton Television. Each broadcaster owns 50 per cent of the company which, when it goes on air in January, will end the disjointed news arrangements between LWT and Thames Television, the outgoing London weekday broadcaster.
Employing some 150 staff at The London Television Centre, LNN will provide three principal services – a seven-days-a-week news and news magazine service for the London TV region, a 24 hour transmission service for LWT, Carlton and GMTV and sports programming for LWT, Carlton, Meridian and GMTV.
Equipping LNN’s newsroom, studio and offices has cost around £7.5 million out of a total capital investment of £14 million. Hence managing director Clive Jones’ aforementioned remark about it being “probably the most advanced” in Europe.
Paul Wilcock, head of engineering and operations, opted for the latest generation of Basys’ news automation system for LNN’s newsroom and says that it combines a high quality machine control system with user-friendliness for the 60 journalists who will use it. Each of the Basys screens, for instance, can become television screens at the touch of a button.
Everything is brand new, including LNN’s purpose-built studio which has two glass walls to provide “live” panoramic views over London behind the presenters. The 2,000 square feel studio is equipped with five Sony CCD cameras in fixed positions for opening and closure sequences. The gallery features a Betacart system and Sony 8000 series vision mixer with two channels of digital effects. Although LNN will receive and send signals in PAL, the entire facility will operate in 270MBit serial digital.
“We will be providing bulletins from first thing in the morning to last thing at night” says Jones, “and our principal show every weekday night, between 6 and 7pm is London Tonight, fronted by Alastair Stewart and Fiona Foster. At weekends, there will be lunchtime and teatime bulletins.” A feature of the news at Sunday lunchtimes will be a political show presented by Peter Allen who has joined LNN from ITN.
Footage will come from up to 14 camera operators using 11 crew cars and three live links vans. “The trucks will be on the road every day beaming stories live from any part of London”, says Jones.
“They have on-board editing facilities and all the operators are multi-skilled. We have set up microwave links and reckon we can cover 97 per cent of the region live from here. And we are taking full advantage of the latest technology which means that we can deliver at a low price.”
To clear any current industry confusion, he adds that LNN has “never had any discussions with Visnews” over the provision of news feeds and that it will be working with, not against, the ITV network news contractor ITN.
Numerous stories in the press have quoted Jones as likening the style of London Tonight to LWT’s the 6 O’Clock Show and “Nationwide on speed”.
But he says that there is no real model for the flagship show.
“London is one of the world’s great cities and we want to deliver a news service that will reflect that”, he explains. “The news elements will be slicker and city-wide, American style. We have 14 of our own crews plus three or four stringers so, if there’s a really big story, we can hit it with a lot of resources. There will be two or three live elements in every show every night.”
“But as well as being a slick, fast, all embracing news service, it’s going to have a strong features base. We’ve got a big entertainment department with two very strong correspondents.”
Other specialist correspondents will cover key areas of London life such as arts, crime and transport. “New films and shows open every week in London – you can watch O1 but they should be reflected in the news service too”.
Instead of following the national news, LNN will have its own agenda. Strong investigative journalists will deal with London issues such as the crisis in secondary schools, the plight of the homeless and a transport system which, he says, is “dropping to bits”.
“We think we have assembled one of the strongest journalistic teams of any ITV company”, Jones declares. And he is confident that LNN will provide Londoners with a standard of service which has been lacking under the existing system.
“LWT and Thames never had seven days a week to play with,” he reasons. “This is a unified service with no false divisions between LWT and Carlton.”
And, of course, it also makes economic sense. If a joint venture hadn’t been created, Carlton would have to be building everything on its own and LWT would have had to revamp its facilities at some stage. We’ve been able to build a state-of-the-art facility which has saved them both in terms of capital investment,” he says. LNN has been no less resourceful in the field of sport, drawing on Jones’ experience at TVS where he was deputy managing director and director of regional programming.
“I’d been used to running an integrated news and sports department and knew the economies of scale,” he says, so we are putting together London Sport Network, a division which will provide all sports programmes for LWT, Carlton, Meridian and GMTV.” They will receive sports news seven days a week and Midweek Sports Specials on Wednesday evenings.
Commenting on how this is likely to affect ITV Sport’s coverage – much of which is produced by LWT – Jones says: “We’re hoping we will continue to secure network sports production. It will be the strongest sports department in the whole of ITV and we can build on the expertise of existing LWT staff.”
Currently there are three ITV transmission suites in London – one for Thames, one for LWT and one for TV-am. But from January there will be just one and it will never close. LNN’s state-of-the-art transmission operation is centred around a Sony LMS computerised library management system and D2 format machines which can play out commercials and promotions completely automatically.
Computer specialist Hoskyns has been contracted to write software for shared used by LWT, Carlton and GMTV.
“A lot of transmission staff are here already and we’re exercising our LMS machines”, says Jones. “At the moment we’re shadowing LWT’s transmission operation, training our staff and de-bugging the equipment. LWT will swap to our system ahead of the January start date.”
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