thumb|Production control room at Sky Sport24.
The production control room (PCR) or studio control room (SCR) is the area in a television studio in which the configuration of the outgoing program takes place.
The production control room is occasionally also called an SCR, or, in British English, a gallerythe latter name comes from the original placement of the director on an ornately carved bridge spanning the BBC's first television studio at Alexandra Palace which was once referred to as like a minstrels' gallery. Master control is the technical hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations and television networks. Master control is distinct from a PCR in television studios where the activities such as switching from camera to camera are coordinated. A transmission control room (TCR) is usually smaller in size and is a scaled-down version of centralcasting.
Production control room facilities
thumb|A virtual monitor wall in a PCR at Germany's [[RTL (German TV channel)|RTL]]
Facilities in a production control room include:
- A video monitor wall, with monitors for program, preview, VTRs, cameras, graphics and other video sources. In some facilities, the monitor wall is a series of racks containing physical television and computer monitors; in others, the monitor wall has been replaced with a virtual monitor wall (sometimes called a "glass cockpit"), one or more large video screens or video walls, each capable of displaying multiple sources in a simulation of a monitor wall.
- A vision mixer, a large control panel used to select the multiple-camera setup and other various sources to be recorded or seen on air and, in many cases, in any video monitors on the set. The term "vision mixer" is primarily used in Europe, while the term "video switcher" is usually used in North America.
- A character generator (CG), which creates the majority of the names and full digital on-screen graphics that are inserted into the program lower third portion of the television screen.