TV and News Studio Installation

News, debate and programme studios need different light

The studio format is where the lighting plan starts. Even in the same room, fixture positions, counts and control needs change with the show format.

• News desk: fixed shots with the presenter’s face first; a repeatable setup that gives the same result every day.
• Debates and guest shows: several people and camera angles; every guest has to look right from every angle.
• Studio programmes: coloured sets, effects and movement; colour control as well as white light.

Broadcast panels, spotlights and set lights

News studio lighting is built in layers: wide soft panels for key and fill, focusable spotlights for back light and accents, and colour wall washers for the set, logo and backdrop.

In Meltem TV’s new studio in Ankara we combined TrueLight Spots for depth and accents with TrueLight Soft panels for general coverage. At 0 TV we used 120x30 cm TrueLight Ultra Soft linear panels instead of square panels to get shadow-free light on the presenters. At TRT Haber we worked with the Nanlite Forza series and TrueLight Studio panels.

Heat, energy and silence

LED fixtures give off far less heat than older tungsten fixtures. That is a direct gain for presenter comfort, air-conditioning load and long broadcast hours. In 24/7 studios such as Bloomberg HT and Haber Global we installed quiet, heat-free systems.

In a broadcast studio, fan noise ends up in the microphone, so we also weigh cooling design and fan modes when choosing fixtures.

Rigging, rails and DMX infrastructure

The ceiling grid or rail system that carries the lights is infrastructure the studio will use for its whole life. It has to be positioned for the camera angles and the set, and leave room for fixtures added later.

With DMX 512 every light is run from one console in the control room, and lighting states prepared for each show can be stored and recalled. At 0 TV and EkoTurk the lighting is controlled from the control room over DMX 512.

Control room, cameras and signal

Cameras, vision mixer, control room and signal infrastructure are separate layers of the project. We plan the lighting together with these systems and settle the coordination during the survey. At Halk TV the scope also covered camera-angle optimisation and set infrastructure; at Valorant Champions 2022 we oversaw the technical integration of the lighting infrastructure and signal flow.

TrueLight: broadcast lights made in Türkiye

TrueLight, our own brand, is broadcast lighting manufactured in Türkiye. TrueLight systems are used in the TV100 main news studio, the Haber Global news centre we completed in 2018, EkoTurk, Meltem TV and 0 TV. Being able to make panels in project-specific sizes gives flexibility in studios with difficult architecture.