What you like about this telly stuff...

I remember the first day we had a Teletext TV, I spent the whole afternoon selecting every page on Ceefax and Oracle (good job there was no C4 back then !)

Well, Monday is the thirtieth anniversary of deregulation of TV listings, which means it's also the thirtieth anniversary of my Radio Times collection. I'd kept the Christmas Radio and TV Times in both 1989 and 1990 (I was ten years old in 1989) but now there was only one magazine I thought it would be easier to start keeping hold of it. For the first three months I was kidding myself I could make do with only selected issues, before I just gave in and kept them all, and later adding various back issues via eBay and the like. They're totally worthless, as they were all kicked around the living room for a week and all the relevant info is on Genome, but I do still read them, much to my partner's delight. I still think they're absolutely fascinating social documents, a real snapshot of what people were doing and talking about at the time.

When I was at university in the late nineties I had so little to do most weeks that I would often just re-read that week's Radio Times, so I have almost photographic memory of some of those issues. Indeed, having assumed when I went to university that I'd have no time to watch much television, I promptly watched more than I'd ever done before or since, and that was also the period where a) I'd often go to Birmingham Central Library to read their Radio Times back issues and b) got onto the internet for the first time and discovered the MHP and Andrew Wiseman's 625 and so on. I've pretty much accepted that while I did get a degree while I was there, I was actually doing a concurrent degree on the Radio Times, and remarkably I appear to have made a career out of that.



Yes, the Broom Cupboard really was such an influence, and also the Saturday morning programmes, Going Live especially, I was fascinated by how it was all put together using all the different sources and inserts. My sister and I used to "play" Saturday morning programmes in the back garden (come on, we've all done it), and while my sister would just pretend to be a pop star, I would inevitably come up with an exhaustive running order for the whole thing. And of course I would always make sure we would "play" one episode which was cut short for The Lord Mayor's Show or something which meant I could rearrange the entire running order. Used to love that kind of thing. Inevitably that led to writing schedules for my own made-up TV channels in my exercise book and presenting shows under my breath during school breaktime and so on.

I was also absolutely fascinated by Get Fresh and how it was made by a different company every week, and spotting all the differences and how the different production teams did it. There's an interview with Larry Grayson in, surprise, a Christmas Radio Times, where he says when he was young he was absolutely obsessed by films and watched so many so often that it got to the stage where he could tell what studio made a film just by looking at it, because MGM films had a certain look and feel compared to Paramount films. And I reckon it got to the stage where I could do that with telly shows, certainly kids' shows, where I could work out which ITV region made a show, and I could tell when one was made by BBC North West, for example.

Thoughts then obviously turned to doing something based around that, and the fact I liked writing. I did put off serious journalism, though, because I did work experience at Radio Clwyd in the early nineties and went off with a reporter to watch him cover the announcement of job losses at British Aerospace. I was absolutely horrified when the press conference was over and we were waiting outside for reaction when the reporter jumped onto the bonnet of a speeding car to grab an interview with some executives who were leaving, and that absolutely put me off news journalism for good and convinced me to paddle in the shallow end. David Renwick used to be a journalist and he said he went into it because he liked writing, but soon realised you're so often writing stuff you're either told to write or stuff people don't want you to write.

I did do media A-level and the like, but I later realised that I actually wasn't that interested in making programmes, a bit like how if you like reading you don't always enjoy doing English Literature because it ends up just spoiling the books for you when you pull them apart. So I ended up spending a decade or so in feature journalism, with the telly stuff as a part-time sideline, before that pretty much became the job, and I finally found a role where I can think about TV all day and actually make a difference without actually making any programmes. And I do still find it exciting getting the schedule for the following week on a Monday and by Friday making sure it's been sorted and everything's in place. There's always something new or interesting.

Not being from the UK, I might have a slightly different take on this, but there's definite commonalities wirh other posters here. While I can't precisely define the root of my fascination, when I think about it, there are a set of memories from early childhood through about age 16 which capture what I enjoy about TV and pres

The Beginning: The Testcard
One night (or possibly very early morning) young me awoke, climbed out of bed and ventured into the lounge to sit in front of the main television,. When I switched on the TV I saw what I would later (thanks to TV Ark) come to know as the Philips PM5544 testcard. Unfortunately that night, for reasons I can't recall, the volume went to max, scaring me, waking my parents, and ending my little adventure.

In NZ TV breakdowns are very rare, so I don't recall seeing that card again until Channel 4 launched some years later.

That was it for a number of years, aside from knowing that those around me cared little if at ll for new idents, nor did they want to understand the intricacies of the teletext diagnostic page..

Viewing Choice

When I was about 13, I was gifted a 14"" Philips TV. Unlike years prior, the relative privacy of my bedroom and a remote to call my own began the development of my viewing habits, largely free of parental influence or censorship; along with that came the obliteration pf my circadian rhythm once I became a regular viewer of BBC World, which TVNZ used as filler each night between 0000 and 0600 nightly.

While I enjoyed seeing changes in the domestic pres available to me, World in the early 2000s was the first time I remember actively looking forward to seeing a particular set of presentation and even moreso the music that accompanies it.

Breakdowns
TV transmission in NZ is a different beast than the UK. We don't do regions, or opts (aside from ads), and in my experience you might see a breakdown slide once or twice a year. Given that background, you can perhaps imagine my inability to look away during 2000 power cut.

Finding Others
Somehow I discovered a classmate of mine had also been watching that night and we ended up discussing it, and he eventually introduced me to TV Home, which leas to TV Ark, MHP and all the rest.

Loss
Some years later TVNZ stopped paying for World, and there it ended for a number of years as I had no more access to World.

To cope with this I read a lot more here and elsewhere online. In doing that I learned that a lot of my interest is in how television works - the common thread between cue dots, VT clocks, RBS tests, BT Tower and so many other I enjoy, is that they all show how TV as a medium works technically, and what happens when it doesn't

Well I suppose I'm someone described above as an 'industry veteran'.

As a nipper I wondered how this tv thing worked, I knew there weren't very small people inside it .. but how? So I found out and now I know.

For me though it's just a niche of an interest in a much bigger topic - design. Product design, brand identity, graphic design, user interfaces, title sequences, it's all stuff you wouldn't want to bore people about at a party but it's still a pretty big topic, and TV presentation is just one part of it for me.

I've always just loved TV in general so it's no surprise that these two interests came together. I think what sparked it off for me was these great animations that CITV used to use:

Two things I can very much relate to...

My interest in television presentation began at a very early age. I remember looking at an old TV Times as a child and seeing all the different television logos in the listings. My neighbour would use to give me their old Radio Times for me to read (I was brought up in a Sun TV Guide family sadly).

As I grew up, I was fascinated by changes in production endcaps and when Meridian took over from TVS I was obsessed with seeing the new branding on the first day, even talking to a (now departed) neighbour about it. I was bloomin' 8 at the time.

In early 2001 (16 years old) I used the internet for the first time at school (never had it at home until I moved out of my parents home in 2004), and just out of curiosity, I typed in tv logos into a search engine. The search lead me to a website called The TV Room, and from there I read up on the history of the TV idents that the companies have used over the years. From there, I discovered TV Home, and then TV Forum, which I joined on April 7th 2001. This was the perfect distraction from my GCSE exam.

College beckoned, and I learnt more about the internet and how websites were built, and I tried to create a site to emulate the great sites at the time (TV Room, TV Ark, TV Whirl and so on), but just didn't have the necessary knowhow to put it all together. I got my first TV capture receiver in 2005, but it was only an analogue one so I could only get 4 channels. I saw Channel 5 for the first time in 2003 when the signal to my home got a boost. It was used faithfully until it was destroyed in a house fire.

I moved into my current home in 2006, and was starting to live my life more independently, and so my enthusiasm for TV presentation grew. On a work trip to Makro, I purchased another capture device, but this time it was a Freeview device. After using it for a few weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to try to build a new TV presentation website, and so, on June 27th 2007, TV Live was born.

These days, I use a satellite receiver purchased from eBay for my capturing, and my world is a much better place for it.

The amount of friends I've made through this interest has been incredible, and I wouldn't change it for the world. I may be pushing 40, but the hobby of being a television presentation enthusiast is one I wouldn't want to give up. Ever.

Whenever we had a family trip 'out of region' I'd try to persuade my parents to pull over at a newsagents, and buy a local copy of the Radio Times. The Wales edition was a sight to behold !! I seem to recall Look-In magazine which was national, had a listings page with all the ITV logos. I'd be fascinated by them. The 70s really were that dull !

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. For me, it was watching CBBC, and seeing the graphics used on the continuity but also lots of the other shows. The most exciting time for me was when the CBBC channel launched, and the use of the green bugs interrupting both CBBC continuity and BBC One. It felt like the buildup to the launch took ages back then, but I guess it was only a couple of weeks.

The idea of going from CBBC Choice to a proper full-time channel felt very cool to me. I guess as an adult I would say that it was exciting that so much was being invested in young people, though of course I wouldn't think of it in those terms.

Anyway, I loved the graphics but I also loved the sets, and how it worked in the sense of studios. I still think the 2002 TC2/9 CBBC sets are things of beauty. Bright colours, very on-brand, but in a suprising, modern way. And the presenters themselves added to the 'cool' vibe (certainly for a child). I always wanted to see behind the scenes of the live shows – Blue Peter, continuity, XChange, the Saturday morning shows and so on. At one point as a child, I wanted to be a camera operator. In a funny old way I've kind of achieved that goal through my current work.

I remember doing exactly that in Hunstanton when I was young, and seeing that they stocked both the Yorkshire/Tyne Tees and Anglia editions of the RadioTimes - but I could only get the one, so I chose Yorkshire/Tyne Tees, as it had a greater number of regional variations, including BBC Scotland

Hooray! In the nineties I did try and get a copy of the Radio Times from every region in the UK, when it was still just about worth doing. Over the course of two years (including buying the Ireland edition in Dublin) I got every region apart from East Anglia, and I was very pleased with myself. We had the North West edition at home and I was absolutely fascinated in November 1992 when due to a printing error the middle sixteen pages or so were actually from the North East edition, so Saturday to Tuesday had Tyne Tees listings, which was very exciting.

Before all that, one of my highlights of our holiday to Scotland in 1990 was the opportunity to read the Border edition of the TV Times in Tebay services.

It's a shame now there are only three different editions for the whole of England, but on the plus side it means that each one has a very wide catchment area, and the London/Midlands/Anglia edition that I get is available in Wrexham when my parents live, so I can buy it there when I'm visiting and not have to wait until I get home.

Oh, the fascination has never really left me. I was working in Belfast in 1991, and I sneaked into a newsagent there to take a look at the Radio Times NI edition. Am I mis remembering, or did it really carry RTE TV listings in the 'Regional Variations' column ?