Behind the scenes on The Front Bar, including the Seven Docklands control room…
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Nice find and good video. In the first bits, you can glance to the right and see what IIRC is the old MCR that was part of Seven’s national play-out facility from 2002 - 2019 with those monitors and large glass windows, a wooden floor atrium and spiral staircase beyond the other glass and this HSV-7 control room featured may have been one of those other MCR rooms (audio, tech or some other broadcast team role) that you used to be able to see through a partially opaque opening/window with more monitors to the left as the background live graphic during Seven’s national news bulletins in the 2000s, which you can also see in this video extending further to the back (past that wall with the “7” on it) - @MBB @BJT2 might be able to understand what I’m getting at and clarify?
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Here is a flooplan of BCM that I found on Turner Hughes Architects website. The resolution isn’t good but I think I found the control and audio rooms shown in the video. These are highlighted.
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I believe there is a second control room (in red) where News comes from.
Still a great facility… it’s a shame the Network doesn’t utilise it more.
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Where the blue square is - I believe that’s the news studio?
The current set would be on the top, while TT used to be on the right.
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Yes that’s the news studio… and below it is the open newsroom.
The Front Bar studio is to the left of it. Slightly bigger.
Also, the old Broadcast Cafe is above it. There was an open window in which the public could see into the news studio.
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Literally sinking?
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What?
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Check out #IStandWithStan on Twitter for a look around ABC facilities in Australia and the world today outside and in.
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The Telstra fibre link to Mt Soma has been damaged (I believe it might be significant too) - WIN and Seven are off air (again), but expecting to be back on-air late tonight. Been down since about 8am this morning
Something similar happened at Coonabarabran recently too
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So Nine, ABC and SBS are unaffected? Do you know if Mt Dowe is affected?
Was this similar to the recent outage from only a few weeks ago?
Perhaps they could take a Mt Dowe feed as a backup if that is unaffected?
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I’ve heard different (there were two outages that were linked to a power failure at the exchange) whereas this is a fiber break.
Not sure about other transmitters, based on what I’ve seen on Social Media unlikely its impacted others.
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Mt Dowe was NOT affected, and all services were on air when I got home this Arvo at 5:15
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ABC and SBS would likely get to Soma Mt via satellite.
Nine might be fed with off-air from another site
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A couple of months ago North West NSW had a major telstra outage that took out all commercial tv on Soma (NBN, NEN & NRN) and it also took out NRN (WIN 10) And NEN (Seven) from Dowe. 9NBN remained on air from Dowe during that outage so that suggests 9NBN have there own STL to Mt Dowe. And in the light of the current outage on Soma that would suggest 9NBN changed it receive tech on Mt Soma as well
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Could well be the case - in some places there is fibre to an office in town(eg Launceston) and microwave up to the mountain top. That is also the case in some capital cities for the backup path.
NBN use a number of IBL(in band links) as well in that region: they are a low power UHF DTV transmitter and receiver fed into two gridpack high gain antennas one for the receiver and one for the transmitter. Due to the frequencies used they hop a lot further than pure microwave STL’s and have better rainfade figures. Viewers near those sites can also pick up the overspill from the transmit antenna and sometimes get a better signal than the main station for the area.
NBN’s techs in Newcastle used to maintain all that equipment but I am not sure they are even still there since the big NBN studio shutdown.
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NBN still have techs in Newcastle (now based at Mt Sugarloaf I think), I think they also have some techs based in Coffs, & they still look after all those TX’s.
NBN still have & use a lot of the old Soul Patterson Telecoms Microwave Links (now TPG) for transmission distribution to transmitter sites, but yes, getting away from the big centres NBN have a lot of sites that are fed off air from another site (usually a high power main site), in some areas though NBN have a transmission site that is fed off air from another site, that is fed off air from a main site.
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Thanks for that - my last involvement in the region was back in the days of yore. You answered the question about why NBN may not have gone off due to them still being on the Soul Pattenson microwave.
BAI used to have 2 people out of Sugarloaf and NBN had 4 people at Mosbri CT - it was quite common to see NBN at places like Springbrook and Tamborine, so they got around a bit. Hopefully they all kept a job if they wanted it.
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Above features the SCA Canberra office in Fyshwick, via Google Maps. This office was built in 2020, and this office is technically a broadcast facility, so it fits in this thread.
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Does anyone have screenshots of the MTV UK headquarters?