Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I did actually think Colin was TTT staff - he was a regular on the rota for most of his time there (each of the four announcers usually worked a full day in turn, but of course swapped around as they wished - but generally there was a pattern). Annie St John replaced Colin (on the rota) for a while in 1983, then later that year when Kathy Secker left for a while Colin took her place on the rota. By 1987, the shifts had been split so you had a daytime and evening announcer, and back-to-back shifts weren't allowed - although prior to this I'd seen Bill Steel do three full days off the belt.



I see - thanks for explaining that, Tony. So when a quick glimpse of 'foreign' continuity went out on TTT, it was actually down to the originator not cutting back to a clean feed, and not TTT being slow to opt away. And as jjne explained, the cock ups in '93 were down to YTV's error and not TTT's!

What do the initials MCR and CCR stand for, by the way? Got a fair idea what they are, but not the specific names.



Allan did appear in vision on TTT during his earlier work there, but very rarely (though not 'never') after he moved over full-time in the late 80s.. I have been told that he chose not to appear in vision due to the fact that medication he was taking had caused some facial bloating - I can't comment on the reliability of this, but Allan did have ongoing health problems in later life, and, as we know, has sadly passed on. I remember the odd slide being knocked up, or dug out, specifically for when Allan was announcing, such as a 'birthday' slide, and sometimes a list of birthday names would appear on screen which wasn't the norm.

Thanks Si-Co. I do remember Allan having a slightly bloated appearance in his later years at Border so that will explain the reason for his out-of-vision announcements during his second stint at Tyne Tees. I also seem to remember at that time that if he was on the late shift at Tyne Tees then one of the News team would read the bulletin after News at Ten (this normally being read by the duty announcer).

He certainly wasn't very old when he died in November 1997 - only 64, if memory is correct.

An interesting story. Allan joined Border soon after its launch in 1961 and one of his early duties was to read out the Pigeon Release Times (yes really!). Within a year, Allan had become its Senior Announcer, a post that he would hold for 26 years. One of his first tasks in that role was to compile a comprehensive Guide to Local Place-Name Pronunciation, as he was keen for his team to pronounce place names correctly - for example, Ae (near Dumfries) is pronounced as "Ay", for example, while Cockburnspath is pronounced "Coburnspath". However, on one occasion Border announcer Daphne Neville was left wishing she had studied Allan's guide after pronouncing Cockburnspath as it is written, during a late evening bulletin!

I have... or at least had, no idea where it is... a paper schedule of an evening's output on UTV. I was there for an evening about two years ago. It was pretty much as you'd expect... a table with a list of events (programmes, trails, idents) with the start time of each event, its source, etc. The paper copy was really the only thing that gave the TC an idea of what was happening.

They used to have a "ceefax" style feed of the network ITV schedule which they could see what was happening... but I was told that it had recently been decommissioned.
They also had a red phone which the network TC could call them on to tell them if a change was being made to the schedule... I was told that it was faulty, and that though they could hear the network TC, they couldn't actually talk back to them to ask any questions. To get around this they had a cassette recorder (I kid you not) to record the calls, so they could play them back, as they couldn't ask for something to be repeated.

UTV left (I'm guessing they still do) each network programme manually (I.e. hitting the take button on their mixer) when they thought the programme was over. Each ad in the breaks seemed to follow the other automatically from a playlist. The trails and idents seemed to be run manually off server too. They then joined the next network programme by manually hitting the take button when they saw the programme take to air on the clean feed.

When I say "clean feed"... it was more of a slightly dirty feed, which had I think ITV1 idents before the programmes, but with no ITV1 announcer voice over. The clean feed would also show some network ITV1 trails, but no ads.

There was no count down (audible or visual) out-of or in-to the network programmes. All seemed rather hit and miss to me. Even the local annos seemed to work more by luck than design. The announcer wasn't given a count to start or stop speaking... she just started talking when her mic was opened by the TC, and he closed the mic when she stopped.

Local programmes were played off tape (not server... one tape only, no back-up) and the tape was run by an engineer in the next room when the TC shouted at him to run it.

Interestingly... the network weather after News at 10 was recorded in advance and played in locally by UTV so that they could top and tail it with a different sponsor sting to that used by ITV1.

All very different from how the BBC nations operate.

The paper copy would almost certainly be a print out of the schedule/automation at a certain point that evening. Every TX area I've known has had the workflow of printing out a paper copy of the schedule just in case. It's handy is the automation throws a wobbly or if there are significant changes and you need to refer back to what the original plan was.

A teletext type display was a common feature of many automation systems (or an add on). I don't think it's still the case but before the move to the current TX area, the automation systems for all the channels at TV Centre generated a screen called the 'SSD' (Schedule Status Display). This was essentially a teletext screen showing the current and the next 6 or 7 items in the schedule. It was piped around the transmission areas so everyone could see what was going on on a particular channel easily without having to squint at a VGA PC output and also appeared on the ringmain at TV Centre so anyone could get it up on their telly if they needed to. In the NTA (the TX area from 1995 to about 2001) the SSD was on a screen next to the door to the suite, so you could see when not to enter

Being a teletext page meant that such displays could be sent alongside channels in the VBI to remote locations without having to take up a data or video stream . Channel 4 (pre 1993) and BBC World used to do just this so the places that inserted their adverts could see what was going on. On the distribution stream of BBC World there were 2 pages - 101 showed you the ad breaks and 102 was for opt-out programming. The breaks themselves, which were done in various uplinks, cable headends and TV stations around the world could also be triggered by a pulse sent from London but it was also handy to have access to the exact countdown and schedule. However these pages weren't public, they were removed before they were sent to air and in some areas replaced by the regular public teletext service

I actually have an ex-Meridian Monitor used to display such teletext scheduling. How do I know it was used for such a purpose? I can just about read the screen burn onto the monitor, where various points of information used to be.

Pebble Mill's gallery B had the BBC network schedules on a Teletext screen, was this piped up from London?
Central had GMTV running orders up on a very simple HTML document.

C4's system, as you say used 82-92, was part of the CATS automation system that they developed with Connoly Systems.
It did indeed send the running order in the form of teletext style pages, as well as VBI cue signals to remotely fire up and take to air the cart machines at each ITV station.

Yes, all BBC stations still have this - it's called PresFax and has been mentioned on TV Forum occasionally over the years. However, this is different to the SSD schedule display that the Inspector was talking about a post or two ago. The SSD came directly from the automation system, PresFax is nowadays derived indirectly from the automation and the EPG data AIUI. Presfax has been around for donkeys years and actually existed before the BBC networks were automated. At one point typing it up was a specific job - the Presfax Clerk. Old Presfax was a fixed snapshot display of the junction, generated at some point before the junction (30 minutes?). It would show the trails and transitions and the next programme. In those days there was no BBC Clean Feed, so any region or nation covering trails would have to wait until the Network Director had finished their transition into the next programme before they could join - hence long programme lead sounds on Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on EastEnders - when Network Directors would often practice their 2second mixes... Pres fax was supposed to update each time the schedule changed and certainly updayed again 2 minutes to the junction. I believe there was also a countdown display to the next programme as part of Presfax..

These days Presfax is more reactive than it used to be, in colour (!) and has more items on it. Here's a snap of Presfax as it appears in Cardiff:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidharper/3137152136/

Here are a couple of shots of the 'SSD' screens in the BBC's DTA playout area which closed about 5 or 6 years ago (these are from 2000)
(from http://tvfeatures.thetvroomplus.com/feature-9.html)
http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-6/612/main-12.jpg
http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-6/612/main-39.jpg
The green column on the right shows the source where the item is coming from - D3 6 is a tape machine (D3 format tape which was used them for 4:3 programmes), DB7 is a Digibeta tape machine, the PN's are server ports and the OS's are outside sources. Notice that all of CBBC was coming from OS4, that's because at that time their programmes were played from the studio itself.

The top line of the first one says 'Under 00:05:00 @ 13:00:00:00 - this tells the director that he is 5 seconds under to his next fixed event which is the 1 o clock news and goes out spot on time. He/she will have to find something to use up that time, probably add an extra second to a couple of trails and extend a symbol by a few

The > < next to the top item is a cursor that could be moved up and down to select items for preview.

Interesting to note that it's only recently the BBC nations have been given a clean feed to work from, and at almost the same time as the ITV regions had theirs taken away (as denton says above, UTV's feed from the South Bank is 'soiled' with ITV idents and promos). Didn't UTV and SMG have to work from a totally dirty ITV feed a few years ago, including ITV ECPs? Messy.

I noticed some very slow cross-fading from BBC Network from symbol to programme - were the nations able to mix between symbols neatly, or were they required to hold on their symbol for a few seconds?

Re the CATS system used by Channel 4 to remotely kick off the ads at the ITV regions - either this was faulty, or not available to TTT is 1987, because these were being ran manually then I remember. I remember a ' VT clock' in use displaying 'ITV clocks' or 'Channel 4 clocks' - whether this was on the start of the commercial break carts or a feed from Channel 4 I'm not sure. TTT's gallery had four Channel 4 monitors - one appeared to be an 'off air' feed with commercials inserted, the other three showed a raw feed with break fillers/cards from Channel Four. Not sure why four monitors were required for C4.

During the Carlisle floods in 2005 (when power was lost to the whole city, including Border's HQ, for nearly 24 hours because the city's substation flooded) we got to see what must have been ITV's then feed to the regions. Not 100% how they managed to get it to Caldbeck with Border out of operation, but, for example, there were no adverts as Border couldn't insert them so the screen went to black each break with a countdown timer back into the programme towards the end. From memory this feed had the ITV contitunity on it (obviously that was being done from Leeds or South Bank by then) and ITV promos. During the regional news bulletins that night they threw us Tyne Tees output (in a sign of things to come...).

The unions in some ITV stations 'blacked' the use of the auto start feature, and demanded that local operational staff manually fired off the cart machines etc.