LONDON—One of the many unexpected results from the coronavirus crisis is the important role furniture now plays in both enabling people to carry on working away from their offices and helping them to socially distance when they are at their facility. For broadcasters, specialist technical consoles and desks have long provided a comfortable, ergonomic environment for very specific jobs, such as sound mixing, video editing and color grading. Now these are allowing those tasks to be done either safely at work or remotely.

In some ways, however, this necessary but occasionally taken for granted market was already adapting to changing broadcaster requirements. New studios and facilities are smaller than their predecessors. This is due partly to modern equipment being both more compact and software-based, which enables a large number of functions to be carried out on either dedicated hardware or a laptop computer. There are also likely to be fewer personnel in a control room, although separate, designated areas for audio, lighting and production are still the norm.

HYBRID WORK ENVIRONMENTS

“There’s certainly been shrinkage in terms of studio and suite size, with less equipment installed,” observes Ryan Haberman, chief executive of Forecast Consoles in Hauppauge, N.Y. “But now [since COVID-19] there is a lot of change and we don’t know exactly where things are going. With some broadcasters we have seen a lot of working from home, collaborating over Zoom calls, but those with larger facilities have been putting people in separate rooms for sound, lighting, direction and so on.”

Jansen Hahn, chief operating officer of TBC Consoles in Edgewood, N.Y., does not think there has been a “seismic shift” in the size and shape of facility spaces and the furniture being requested post-pandemic, merely a faster continuation of what was already happening.

“Open offices were all the rage a couple of years ago but there has been a migration from those to smaller edit suites,” he says. “There has been a lot of talk about how to respond post-pandemic and we’re seeing different approaches. Some broadcast staff are doing less intensive work at home and then coming into the facility for a day to finish off. There are fewer people in control rooms and more physical separation between operators.”

Pre-pandemic, Hahn says, there was already a trend towards isolated working areas, particularly in news.

“We were seeing a lot of automation being used and the newsroom staff were working in pods at U-shaped consoles,” he explains. “What has changed now is there is more emphasis on separation between the operators, sometimes with a physical barrier, although partitions are nothing new.” In May, TBC announced a range of partition options to meet social distancing requirements and enable workspaces to be modified. These can be added to any console in the current TBC range, with transparent flexiglass available to facilitate collaborative working.

SAFETY SCREENS

U.K.-based Custom Consoles has similarly been supplying its new Operator Safety Screens to clients for attaching to furniture already installed in facilities. Among those who have added these partitions are Al Jazeera, Amazon Prime, IMG, QVC and Racing UK. BBC Studioworks has put Operator Safety Screens into all its control areas, including the production gallery for the TC1 studio at Television Centre in west London. The screens have been designed for Customer Consoles’ Module-R range but can be fitted to not only other models in the manufacturer’s portfolio but third-party furniture as well.

The forward end of each Safety Screen is a large transparent panel that overlaps the desk. This lets through a lot of light and creates a line-of-sight to video monitor walls for the desk operators. Meryl McLaren, commercial director at BBC Studioworks, commented that the partitions “enhance our health and safety measures” and provide “a reassuring level of protection for our staff and clients.” Gary Fuller, sales manager with Custom Consoles, adds that the screens work in conjunction with mandatory temperature checks, UVC cleaning, one-way pedestrian routes and operating protocols to minimize any risk of infection as much as possible.

“The key change caused by the pandemic itself was that broadcasters realized they needed to create the safest possible working environment for their staff,” Fuller said. “BBC Studioworks was the first to approach us and we were able to respond very quickly with a design that we now offer as the Operator Safety Screen. Demand has proved very high and we have sold in excess of 350 since we started producing them in March.”

COMFORT AND PRODUCTIVITY

Because home working is, by its very nature, a more solitary pursuit, there is no need for partitions or screens; but replicating a proper working environment away from a facility has been crucial in ensuring comfort and productivity during the various stages of lockdown. As soon as isolation rules were introduced—and in some cases, before—broadcasters and facility owners instructed editors, sound designers, graders and other creative-technical staff to work from their homes as much as possible.

Forecast Consoles has a history of designing desks for remote working, having started out catering for the home music recording studio boom of the 1970s.

“We were already designing home working furniture anyway,” Haberman said, “but now people are going for shrunken-down versions of studio consoles, only for the home rather than an edit suite. It’s what companies would be putting into a studio any way, only 4-feet wide and 2-feet deep instead of 8-feet wide and 3-feet deep.”

Haberman says Forecast is offering a range of sizes and shapes to fit people’s homes and the space available. “Editors who live in non-metropolitan areas [in bigger houses] are getting fuller size desks,” he explains. “We’re also selling additional support arms, which allow people to mount monitors on the wall rather than take up space with a floor or desk stand.”

As much as, Haberman observes, “home working is becoming a thing,” there is still a need for some degree of communal working to allow staff to ask for advice or highlight problems without having to book a Zoom session.

TBC’s Hahn agrees, saying that “people still have to go to work to do high-end things,” such as a full drama or theatrical sound mix.

“The broadcasters and facility owners still want to keep the density low, having designated areas and labelling for different operators,” he said. “We’ve also been asked about walls to create one-way corridors and partitions that light up. They’re all things people haven’t needed before but they are thinking about them now.”

Which is a move on from thinking about desks or partitioning walls as merely something to place your coffee mug or hang your coat.

OTTAWA—Forget the NASA look. The days of massive metal-cased production consoles and substantial furniture made of rich-looking woods are long gone.

Today, the trend in modern broadcast/production furniture is minimalist. Manufacturers such as Forecast Consoles, Middle Atlantic, and TBC Consoles are using a mix of thin, shaped metals and smooth, understated surfaces made of faux wood, tinted Lucite and Plexiglas, and other synthetic materials.

SLIM IS IN

When one looks at modern broadcast/production furniture, it is obvious that you can never be too thin.

Gone are the heavy-duty, tank-like desks with vast under-table rack space, and above-desk stacks of side-by-side boxy CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors. They’ve been replaced by clean, pedestal-mounted tables with lots of leg room but minimal (if any) rack space underneath, plus above-desk support frames that barely catch the eye.

“Today, people want broadcast/production furniture that could easily blend into an IT department full of computers, not switchers,” said Gordon Wason, Middle Atlantic’s Broadcast East business development manager. “As a result, the IT look is really affecting how we design our products.”

A major influence has been the flat panel monitor—with HD (and 4K) displays becoming ever-thinner, it makes stylistic sense to mount them on multimonitor display stands that are themselves minimalist and hardly visible. In turn, the consoles that accompany these flat panel displays mirror the same sense of lightness and simplicity. Heavy and clunky is out.

KEEP IT DISCREET

Today’s broadcasters also want products that look like business furniture, rather than industrial racks of electronics with randomly-flashing lights that scream, “Tech!”

“Everybody is looking for furniture where the installed equipment is accessible but not necessarily visible,” said Jansen Hahn, TBC Consoles’ chief operating officer. “They also want their work surfaces to be clean and uncluttered, which is why our latest consoles and desks keep the monitors off the tabletop using vertical stands or back-mounted arms. In addition, users also do not want to see cables, which is why our new line of consoles feature cable access through the legs of the console.”

The move towards the cloud has certainly lessened the need for rackmounted proprietary units to be installed in consoles, but there’s more to the minimalist trend than just the move to IT. Think of it as the “IT trickle-down effect:” As computers become central to broadcast production, the aesthetic that guides IT furniture design is now influencing broadcast/production furniture design. This means keeping equipment discreet and, where possible, hidden out of sight.

Television equipment manufacturers used to house their products in standard-sized rackmountable units with consistent horizontal dimensions; the only place where variability was allowed was in the height of the equipment case: It could be 1RU high, or two, or three—but the length and width stayed constant.

Today, all this has changed. “Because people are now incorporating all kinds of ‘nontraditional’ technology into their production spaces, we need to move beyond bay-width dependency,” said Ryan Haberman, chief executive officer of Forecast Consoles. “As a result, our newer product lines are designed to account for varying equipment sizes, wider monitors, touch based equipment, and modular components for easy reconfiguration. We now have a creative space to partner with clients, integrators, and equipment manufacturers to develop truly unique solutions.”

SHRINKING SPACES

The move to software-based production also means the days of requiring dedicated, function specific spaces for master control and video/audio editing are over. It is now common for these hitherto isolated technical activities to be located in conventional office spaces; alongside accounting and human resources if need be.

Now that this is happening, the economic factors that are affecting general office design are also affecting video production. “Commercial rents are getting higher per square foot, which means that managers want to reduce their operational footprints,” said Megan Knedler, Legrand AV Division’s director of product management, furniture.

“As a result, broadcasters and video production companies are moving their facilities into smaller spaces,” Wason added. “In the past, an audio/video editing bay using broadcast-specific equipment had its own dedicated, specially wired room. Today, an IT-based editing suite is being located in a conventional office; or even just a cubicle with the editor wearing headsets.”

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—Adaptability is the name of the game right now for furniture manufacturers in the broadcast industry, whether it involves adapting to shrinking room sizes, the switch from hardware to software-based workflows, or even the continuing trend of standing desks. Advances in the ergonomic category were on display at this year’s NAB Show, particularly the capability of adding height-adjustable monitors.

Furniture vendors including Forecast Consoles, TBC Consoles and Winsted all showcased this and more at the 2016 NAB Show. Here is a look at what each company offered.

TBC’s ST3 Plus features a height-adjustable console and monitors, as well as a touchscreen cutout.

TIGHTER SPACES
Forecast Consoles updated its MasterRail production console, MasterVision operations and monitoring console, Sightline quick adjust monitor wall, and showcased the latest addition to its ImageMaster console line. It also introduced GCX, a customizable accessory tool for ImageMaster.

The adaptability and customization of these new products is a result of customer feedback, according to Ryan Haberman, director of brand development with the Hauppauge, N.Y.-based company. He says this has led Forecast to “expand our customization offerings to keep pace with the way that operators are interacting with equipment and the type of equipment that is being offered to the market.”

This ability to be able to fit a customer’s specific needs is a result of space becoming more valuable because rooms are getting smaller. “The amount of technology that is going into these rooms is increasing in complexity but decreasing in physical size,” Haberman said. So that was the goal of Forecast’s products at NAB Show this year; as Haberman puts it: “Figuring out how to accomplish people’s wildest dreams.”

MOVING MONITORS
One of those dreams includes the ability to have height-adjustable monitors, a feature TBC Consoles previewed for show attendees. Despite skepticism over the need for height-adjustable monitors, Jansen Hahn, TBC’s chief operating officer for the Edgewood, N.Y.-based company, says the new feature arose from experience with height-adjustable consoles. “If you’re moving your console up, you may lose your sight lines with your monitors, so if you also have a track stand or a track wall that also height adjusts, then you can maintain those perfect sight lines,” he said. To make things easier, TBC’s height-adjustable monitor wall comes with a remote control, according to Hahn.

“The trend is continued adaptability of our consoles,” he said; and that is what the company demonstrated with some of its other products at the show. In addition to the height-adjustment feature available for monitors and the console itself, TBC’s ST3 Plus console now includes a cutout for a touchscreen wall. The ergonomics of the SmartTrac and IntelliTrac have also been adjusted to be customized to fit specific room sizes. “We’ve designed our furniture to meet customer demands one way or another,” Hahn said, “so we’re trying to stay ahead of the curve.”

DUAL SIT-AND-STAND
Winsted also demonstrated adjustable consoles at its NAB Show booth, giving attendees a preview of its Impulse dual sit/stand console. The console offers electrically adjustable monitors—both vertically and horizontally—and personal workspace.

“Being ergonomically correct and being able to adjust to a particular person, operator, editor, what have you, it really is unmatched in the industry,” said Brent Leimer, marketing manager for Winsted in Winchester, Conn.