What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Allan Cartner read news bulletins out-of-vision as a TTTV duty announcer?

Our local one was Anglia Television from Norwich; but when on holiday down in Devon, it was Westward Television and later TSW. Was great watching a different local news.

He did (occasionally, when they couldn't find anyone else to do it -- generally they'd either get a reporter to cover or drag another announcer in for half an hour), but these were occasions when announcers who usually appeared in-vision, were out-of-vision.

There's a police message from Border on TV-Ark as well.

The 9.25am news bulletin was read over the slide on a few occasions in the 80s - sometimes the slide used was well out of date and didn’t reflect the “look” of news programmes at the time. I hadn’t considered the reason being a camera fault.

As for Alan Cartner, when he returned to TTT in 1990, he chose not to appear in-vision at all - by this era I think news bulletins read by the duty announcer had all but stopped, but TTT did resurrect a Birth Days (sic) caption from several years earlier for Alan’s benefit, and even sometimes keyed the names and details of the children celebrating onto the screen as they were read out. I’m told the reason Alan remained out of vision was because medication he was taking had caused bloating to his face.

Thirty years ago, using kit twenty years old, no it certainly wasn't !

Then there's the CBS news flash in 1963 about Kennedy, that was over a slide, because the studio cameras simply hadn't had time to warm up yet.

Those of us of a certain age, will remember when the TV set would take 1 to 2 minutes to warm up and do anything, before transistor/semi-conductor technology advanced enough to be able to use them in tellies

Hard to imagine that in these days were you're used to pressing a button and it's on within seconds.

I suppose it might not have been. As Markymark says they used to take a while to warm up, I guess it's possible that if a technician turned up late for work there might not have been time to warm up / calibrate the camera, so they had to go with what was available, especially first thing. None of that would explain a camera failing at 10.30pm mind...

Also it's possible that the fault was down the line, that Border one for example could have been a problem on the transmission desk?

Cameras (or at least the tube heaters) were normally left on 24/7. They drifted around so much in their first hour or two after power up, it was often better to keep them warmed up continuously

Although boot times on some smart TVs is recreating the good old days in 2020 😁

I remember the old telly we had back in the 80s. If you turned it on after a long while, the sound would come on instantly but the picture would take a few seconds.

Haven't thought about that for years. Good times.

Yes, all solid state circuitry, but CRTs (just like valves) had a heater, to get the electron guns going, so no picture until those had warmed up

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/monitor7.htm