The TV Question Amnesty Thread

Updating the answer to an old question.

If by "lasted the longest" you mean still working as a continuity announcer, I would suggest that it's David Olver at BBC Northern Ireland. He started in 1978 aged 18 and is still announcing full time.

I was once told that a TV stations logs have been asked for by the police in the past. There have been cases where a witness has said, for example, that they heard the gunshot while the credits to EastEndera were playing. They have then gone to the BBC and asked what time exactly they went out.


I'd have thought it's still the same but once automation came in, it was that that generated the 'as run log' of what went out. When I worked in pres the schedules were imported into the playout automation, but then at the end of a day the automation sent what actually went on air back to the scheduling system.

One use of this of course is that the scheduling software kept track of how many times things went out, so if the director swapped out a trail or played a filler that wasn't scheduled then those assets would be updated

The lesson for any would-be murderers, in search of an alibi, is to ensure the only witnesses were watching GMB on +1.

In very very general terms films were provided a couple of weeks before transmission so any ‘cock ups’ should have been picked up well before transmission - but they did happen. From memory the ITFC did act in the capacity you say, if a print was found to be unacceptable by a particular ITV company then the ITFC could generally source another copy. Some prints were sourced from the distributor, some were rather obviously cinema circuit prints. One day I was previewing a film called ‘The Vampire Lovers’, there was a particular scene in it with the lovely Madeline Smith where she removes her blouse leaving herself topless. At that point in the film the image jumped around all over the place. The print was rather obviously a circuit print and at several points in it’s life a number of individual frames had been rather obviously removed by a number of local cinema projectionists at that scene. Maybe you might have gotten away removing one or two frames but so many had been snipped out the print was quite unstable at that point. I stopped the telecine machine to inspect the print and instantly received several objections on the talkback - obviously some of my fellow engineers were watching the film at other locations within the building clearly for technical reasons of course. We got another print.

What did the initials ITFC (and NFC) stand for? Did ITFC deal exclusively with ITV, as the initials may imply? I have seen Channel 5 VT clocks showing ITFC as the contact/supplier, but this was on repeats of 80s imports perhaps initially packaged for ITV.

I was surprised visiting the National Grid Control Centre about 15 years ago that their method of monitoring when a big ticket programme on BBC 1 or ITV was about to end, or go into a break were two off air fed portable tellies on the desk. I think I've asked this before but how difficult would it have been for Red Bee etc to supply them with a schedule run down ? Seems an inappropriate method to let a billion gallons of water loose at a hydro electric power station in Wales, to deal with Corrie's centre break ?!

Wasn't there a story about one of the BBCs heads of channel or presentation having a Presfax decoder at home, if so it probably wouldn't have been an issue for them to have one too. The later teletext based one I assume didn't make it out on air, the current equivalent is web based so possibly not that difficult to let it escape.

As for ITV, I don't think there was an equivalent. Channel 4 had one but until recently they probably weren't interested in their smaller audiences

No, it was only BBC 1 and ITV they were interested in. I suppose half time/full time on football matches on either channel will have been just as much ' visual on the fly' with or without any help from the broadcasters

By the way, wasn't just the national grid who were interested, I was told the water companies also kept a close watch to manage their pumping stations. Awful lot of loo flushes suddenly !

There is some information here.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/aug/02/itv.broadcasting1

I think the initials stood for the Independent Television Film Company but I'm not absolutely certain. I note the article says it was started up in 1976 so there must have been a company of some sort performing their function before that. They used to store and handle video tape and film (not just film as stated in the article). They had a number of vans going between the ITV companies and distributors picking up and delivering material throughout the ITV system.

As the years progressed so their functions and services increased as the article alludes to. In the latter years it was not particularly 'liked' by all the ITV telecine departments as they took on the function of transferring films to tape for ITV distribution so it meant less work for individual ITV telecine departments.

No idea about NFC I'm afraid. As far as I recall those initials stood for the National Freight Corporation whose chairman at one point was Christopher Bland. He made lot of people at NFC very rich, a skill he previously developed elsewhere.

There's a film buried within Youtube showing just that, including interviews with the CEGB staff discussing it at a power station. I'm afraid I can't find it at the moment - it was very pertinent to your question and interesting. Sometime in the 1970's I think, lots of Brylcreem.

Thanks for the info and link about the ITFC. I have previously found very little online about the company, and guessed part of its function by joining the dots.

As for NFC - if it helps “FCS NFC” were listed as the suppliers of imports like A Country Practice and Sons and Daughters on TTT’s internal paperwork. I know that the latter at least was provided by ITFC so perhaps it’s a part of, or different name for, the same company?

Not sure if they changed the name as they stopped dealing with as much film, but it was Independent Television Facilities Centre
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/now-read-this-subtitles-for-sale-q97mjbrk0b5