Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I don't quite understand that. By 2005, no commercials were inserted at Border. Local news studio outputs from Border, ( and TTT, and Granada ) are delivered as outside sources to Leeds, and Leeds feeds the relevant local transmitters with the fully assembled regional outputs.

The link from Leeds to Caldbeck may well still have passed through Border's building, so the power failure may have broken the circuit, but AIUI ITV transmitters have RBS back up using Astra 28E feeds. 'Border's' Astra feed goes no where near Carlisle, it's fed to William Road in NW London, and then on to Arqiva at Winchester for uplink.

Amazing insight denton into UTV's presentation department, thanks for that. It actually makes Tyne Tees's setup from all those years ago sound slick (although to be fair TTTV were a very professional outfit in general, just with a few rough edges when it came to the quality of some of the equipment in the gallery and continuity studio).

How could they live without the red phone? Baffling. Does UTV have no say at all in timings any more then?

Si-Co, are you absolutely sure that Allan appeared at all in-vision in the late 80s-early 90s? I can't remember a single appearance in eight years after 1988, although he did appear in-vision in 1985 when he did a block of shifts over the summer when (I think) Bill Steel was off for about a month.

As far as I am aware Border had no link to either network or transmitters in 2005 -- only a single line in and one out. Possible that something went awry at Leeds when they were trying to re-route regional opts when Carlisle fell off the map.

Oh, and the CATS system was available to Tyne Tees in 1987 -- but ISTR that TTTV's implementation was flaky and still required some manual intervention at times. They used the same system for the Night Time ad-inserts, and it was always going wrong when transmission was down to a skeleton staff after 2am -- which of course was a total PITA for the single man available at that time of night.

And "ITV Clocks" / "C4 Clocks" was a Tyne Tees thing. This was part of their automated system, inserted by the commercial break setup which IIRC took up a whole room in an area near transmission. On overnights this was a continuous tape I believe with all the ads for the night, but during the day the ads were inserted live from the system.

There was a documentary about Julian Simmons produced five years ago (which was available on Google Video but not when I last checked a few months ago) for the RSL TV station in Belfast, and he mentioned something about the timing for his IVC slots had to be checked with the transmission team in Leeds (and before that, somewhere else) so they could be added to UTV time sheets - which were, as denton mentioned, still on paper; as well as the transmission controller, the duty announcer also had their own copy, the closest thing to guidance they had on how long their lengths could be.

Indeed, the same documentary showed an instance where there was a last-minute change by network to the length of a junction; luckily, Julian was able to "wing it" (a phrase that's been mentioned on here a few times about how UTV presentation staff get through links). And down the years, it's seemed obvious which members of the announcing team had becomr more skilled at "winging it" - and more confident at putting effort into making the most of their their links - than others.

Additionally, I believe it was mentioned here before that the only communication system between the transmission gallery and the IVC studio was a telephone on the desk. There was at least one instance where the duty announcer was heard, on-air over an ECP, talking on the phone to the gallery.

A very lax set-up at Havelock House IMO which must cause plenty of headaches for all concerned; I'm unsure whether it has changed since and it would be nice to hear whether it has or not - is having all the regular announcing staff doing IVC links again any indication of this?

That's a common way that ads were done at some stations. The cart machines would be used to compile all the breaks for a certain period onto tape and then that was played in the breaks instead of doing it live. Useful for periods with minimal staffing or as a backup, but not very flexible if sudden changes are needed. I used to work with a system that compiled ads and trails for a satellite channel. All the breaks would be recorded onto tape (the record machine being controlled by the cart machine) and then the system would generate a computer file (on floppy or course) which was loaded into the playout automation so it knew where on the tape the breaks were

The cart machines such as the MARC or the LMS were pretty big and at ITV stations in the 80's there would be at least 2 - one for each channel. So they would take up a room and there would have been a seperate team of operators looking after the breaks, a workflow that still exists at some places. Channel 4's playout for example has a seperate area for adverts, although of course it's just server playlists rather than tapes now

Yes, I know the microphone in Studio 4 ( CA booth) has got a bit of stick because it was an on/off button rather than a fader and there was always a 'thud' when it was turned off and on, audible even during end credits. The best way round that seemed to be flicking the switch during a fade-to-black/fade-to-silent, but the CA had to be quick. The mic switch was also right beside the studio light on/off switch so the odd time you'd get an announcer in the dark talking inaudibly at the start of an IVC announcement. The announcements also tended to sound 'noisier' than on many other channels - think of a cassette recording, with background noise/hiss.

I remember one Saturday evening when the mic was faulty - much interference when Judi Lines was doing a live v/o to a trailer before a show. No-one in pres must have realised because in her next link, 25 mins or so later, it continued to deteriorate and then cut out altogether as she was running through a line-up. They ended up cutting to the ads early and filling the time after the ads with a wee bit of music, whilst someone technical got their hammer and nails out. Made the night's viewing interesting for me!

The live cross-fader always seemed to cause a split-second cut-out of the audio too, most noticeable when cross-fading into the opening credits of a programme.



I think so, but my memory may be playing tricks on me. It was 1990 when I was advised of Allan's alleged reason for not appearing in vision, and I'm pretty sure it was after this that I saw him pop up once or twice. But, as I said, I may be recalling this incorrectly.



Cheers for that. Somewhere on VHS I have a recording when the 'C4 clocks' screen went to air during a C4 ad-break, with the ads being played late. A similar 'whoops' is on YouTube from YTV, but a standard VT clock went to air then, straight from the cart/tape containing the ads.



That was the beauty of live continuity, and the reasons why some announcers preferred not to work from a script and ad-lib to a point. You could beautifully time 20 seconds of IVC but if something didn't go to plan and your TC suddenly told you to fill for 60 seconds, well - have the TV Times to hand at least!



At Tyne Tees the TC could talk to the CA (as well as the newsroom etc) by intercom, which I guess was the norm on many stations. But when the mic was live (ie. anno actually on air) it wasn't unheard of for the phone to ring on the announcer's desk - normally when a programme failed to run - and he or she would excuse themselves to the viewer and pick up the phone. Tended to be a flashing light rather than a 'bring bring' in later years though!

I think the 'hiss' in the studio was fairly typical of studio noise of the vintage of the studio itself (late 1970s). You got used to it, and to be honest the sound quality was consistently good noise notwithstanding -- not so the like of UTV! The click on the mike was one of the things I was referring to though -- very odd that they didn't fix it as I'm sure a fader inserted in-line wouldn't have cost the earth. I think the general fix for the problem was, as you say to have certain points at which the sound wouldn't be broadcast, and indeed I know that Jonathan Morrell had the quiet operation of the control down to a fine art, so it wasn't impossible to operate it quietly.



That's bizarre -- I also saw that and was thinking of commenting on it some time! Cue lots of menus and music being played.... But I remembered it as being Bill, still it was a long time ago!



Witness TV Ark's 1980 news bulletin for an example of this happening over and over again. Thing is, once again in 1980 this was probably more or less acceptable, but they still had the same equipment in service in 1991. The weird thing was that they seemed to have two mixers in use -- one that had capability for screen-wipes etc (which glitched) and one that wasn't (which didn't glitch, but the fades to black were much slower). It seemed to depend on which controller was on duty as to which was used.



Witness Colin Weston's notorious Christmas cock-up for copious use of the phone!! Thames also had this setup as I recall -- there's a clip doing the rounds of Tom Edwards rather campily taking a call from "Duggie" during a very slick IVC masking a technical glitch.

Thanks Inspector for the comments re the advert cart machines -- I don't think TTTV's setup was sophisticated enough for there to be files on floppy disk -- it was all quite manual as I recall, although the system did have quite a clever little trick for masking off the black space between the adverts

Noel Edmunds seems to be making a living out of the practice currently

That Tom Edwards one is on TV-Ark as well, just had a look at it again. A real demonstration of what a useful thing a good IV announcer is to have. Leave the camera and sound on, let the anno do his thing and the controller can get on with the business of pulling his last remaining follicles out without having to worry about such irrelevances as the actual station output at the same time. Three full minutes of waffle there and he looked like he could have done another 3 without a problem.

My god was he camp though or what?

Would IVC announcers have had earpieces and talkback from the TC?

Good old Johnty! I've heard C90s of him practising announcing on Tyne Tees, long before he actually worked for them! The 'mic clunk' was never unacceptable - in fact it was a rather quaint touch - but like you say it would appear to have been so easy to avoid it. The Colin Weston clip you mention has no such 'clunk' - although I think the set up was slightly different for the Christmas sets. The desk was built up on blocks and I remember being told that one announcer knocked these over minutes before he was due on air!



Perhaps it happened more than once!



The TTTV announcers certainly had earpieces at one point.

EDIT: Can I just say what a fascinating thread this is - one of the best discussions in a long time, harking back to the golden age of TV Forum, as well as the golden age of ITV!

For a number of years we had both Presfax and SSD... Presfax (snapshot style as you say) to tell us what was happening in the analogue pres suites... and the SSD (showing live updates from the automation) to tell us what was happening in the digital pres suites. The SSD was very reliable.

When network BBC pres moved to the Broadcast Centre both old Presfax and SSD were decommissioned. The current system (also called Presfax) is actually more like old Presfax than the SSD. It doesn't show the Nations and Regions live updates from the automation in London... it receives snapshots (like old Presfax) and counts down through the "on-air" event, when it reaches zero the next event moves to the top of the screen to become the on-air event. The snapshot of information is updated automatically every time the director in London makes and stores a change to their schedule. It is better than old Presfax... but not quite as on-the-ball as the SSD was. To make up for it though we do still have talkback from London, with the director there counting through every event in their schedule.