UTV

In the interests of diversity, equal opportunity, and not repeating the same visits as last year, took the Tech Campers to UTV this morning (instead of the BBC). And it was good.

Tea/coffee and scones! A guided tour through the news studio (which is about to be gutted), a play with a studio camera and into the gallery.

Interesting to discover that as we play around with non-linear editing (Avid, Pinnacle, etc), most news and sports reports are still edited in a linear fashion - splicing the footage together by playing off one tape machine and recording onto another.

A quick stop at the green room before going up to the newsroom - which looked fairly hectic due to the airport security troubles - though Paul Clark came across to us (unplanned and unasked) and took the time to talk to us and explain what was going on.

Having waved in the window of the U105 radio studio at Lynda Bryans, we sufficiently distracted her that she popped out the door and invited us inside, even changing the running order to play another record back to back (auto-crossfaded) to give us five minutes to all chat with her inside the shiny new studio.

And the campers were all given very nice UTV goody bags ... while Pamela Ballantine managed to avoid running over any of us as she zoomed out of the staff car park and up the Ormeau Road. Not quite sure how logo-emblazoned pedometers help the UTV brand, but the campers loved them.

Compared with out trip to the BBC last year, UTV is obviously a smaller operation, but one that has a much tighter family feel. The UTV kit may be a little more dated (U105 radio being the exception) - but the staff loyalty seemed stronger.