What a fascinating day! It was ‘Technology Day’ at the BBC World Service today, which means all the more technical departments threw their doors wide open. 

After lunch we went up one floor to have a look at the ‘Production House of the Future’. The whole floor of North East block of Bush House has been recently converted to a massive, open plan production studio. Actually, several different open plan studios.

The idea was to play around and experiment with new technology and innovative uses of upcoming (and current) technologies. What a fascinating result! I have a bit of production experience, but these new appproaches and implementations absolutely blew me away.

Some of the ideas included glass studios with electronically adjustable desks for seated or standing presenters, which could be integrated with the adjoining glass studio. All of this would be controlled from the central island, which is surrounded by six glass studios in total. They also have miniature little recording studios they call a ‘pod’ (wonder if Apple is going to sue us), which is actually not a studio at all but merely an open-to-all desk setup. I guess you had to be there.

We also visited the new digital TV studios on the first floor, and it’s hard to believe these fascilities are merely two floors below me. Kitted out with the newest Sony Z3 HDV cameras and Sony mobile video mixing equipment, the whole studio (excluding lights) can actually be carried around by one person, maybe two if you want more than one camera.

The ‘New Media’ division also had a small expo, where the demo’ed stuff like the new BBC iPlayer and Java mobile web browser. I don’t know if it’s available yet, but it’s impressive! The streaming stuff and podcasting also fascinated me, obviously, but that was nothing new to me.

Everyting was cool, but I was by far the most impressed with the new approach to the recording studios.  There’s my geek rant for the day. If it bored you, why are you still reading?