ITV abandons the South Bank

Just bonkers when you look back. Especially as a few years later if the Chris Moyles team were doing an event somewhere, they would simply do the following morning's show from the nearest BBC studio.

Same thing has happened more recently at Radio X - the show's come from one of the regional Heart/Capital/Smooth sites, although in Birmingham they too used a makeshift flight case studio in the boardroom because there wasn't a spare studio (all 3 being taken up with the 3 West Midlands brands.)

What would the hand held camera have been back then, Marconi or IVC possibly ? It looks pretty ropey
in the video. The main studio cameras were EMI 2001s I think ?

LWT had IVC handhelds didn't they? (IVC made better VTRs than cameras I believe...)

BBC OBs were probably running Fernseh KCR40s in that era I think, though may still have had the Philips PCP-90 'Minicams' that were their first colour handheld (and the only PAL PCP-90s made I believe, though there were rumblings of another PAL broadcaster buying one).

Ha, I worked at IVC's UK office just after Carlton had bought the company, and renamed it IVCC, they
were by then building DVEs, a bit later the name changed to Abekas, and the rest is history.

Anyway, this was 1984. They were still servicing the IVC cameras for some ITV companies (I can't recall which ones). One of my jobs as a student 'intern', was to produce Quad alignment tapes which involved changing the test signal on a Tek 1411 every three mins, which an IVC Quad VTR recorded. (I wasn't allowed to fiddle with too much on the VTR !) Happy days

IVC 7000 Camera
https://www.tvcameramuseum.org/ivc/ivc7000p/picture/ivc7000p.pdf

(Picture bottom right page 7 is a shot from Thames shooting an outdoor scene from George and Mildred

I didn't know IVC made Quad VTRs. The 2" VTR I knew about was helical.

You're right, it was helical 2 inch, not Quad 2 inch, (see, I did say I wasn't allowed to play with it very much !)

Thanks for this. The video's clearly all filmed in a single take so it certainly seems like a pretty ad hoc production. It's been mentioned earlier in this thread that they would often mount small-scale productions in the corner of Studio 1 and 2 (much like how occasionally Points of View and The Sky at Night would come from the corner of TC1) so it presumably wouldn't have been that unusual to commandeer it when it wasn't being used. Presumably the smaller studios were busy with their regular programmes.



I remember reading a discussion about this at the time. Worth pointing out that Mark and Lard's show was made by the entertainment department at BBC Manchester, which was a bi-media department, so it presumably had some kind of long-term hire on the TV studio. I also remember reading they couldn't use any of the other studios in Manchester as they were all in use for GMR and they weren't suitable for Mark and Lard anyway as they were used for speech-based programmes.

It's interesting to watch the video and observe the dynamics between the two of them. Elton almost drags Kiki in, and she looks reluctant until about 30 seconds in when she relaxes, and goes with the flow. The hand jiving is clearing Elton in ad-lib mode leading Kiki.

One of the comments on one of the You Tube uploads says Mike Mansfield directed the shoot. Makes total sense, but it demonstrates how poor the production of this tribute show was. It failed to 'join the dots' between the footage of 'SuperSonic' and this video. Similarly Danny Baker mentioned seeing Micky Dolenz at the studios, well, no surprise, he was Metal Mickey's producer.

Poor stuff, it all deserved a properly researched and structured programme, something BBC 4 should do perhaps ?

Well exactly. It all had an air off 'well, I suppose we should do something'

As mentioned before, hosted by someone who never presented a programme from TLS, down the the mentions of 'moving to a 'shiny new headquarters..' and a curious seemingly random, but I suppose, clips and programmes from the studios chosen for the target audience.

At least they used 'River 2' for the break bumper stings..

I will try and find out some more for you. Given the single was released in 1976 I think we can safely assume the studio cameras were the EMI 2001's. OB's did have IVC 7000 portable and studio cameras. i think those concerned at the time would be disappointed that you refer to it as 'pretty ropey', despite it's somewhat adhoc appearance it would have been staged professionally.

Edited to add, my source does not have any more information I'm afraid although I believe it was directed by Mike Mansfield in one take.

Most of the pictures definitely have a 2001 look (Elton's got the classic flesh tone), though the low angle is trickier to tell because of all the flare and the blooming on the mic stand. (Could an EMI 2001 do that shot even on a different mounting to a normal ped?)

Oh, I'm sure everything was set up properly and professionally. Take a look at 1:27, the registration seems to be noticeably out bottom right of the picture (though as Noggin says the blooming and flaring doesn't 'help')

https://youtu.be/z0qW9P-uYfM?list=RDz0qW9P-uYfM&t=78