Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

Yes, for a while they seemed to only have a dirty feed of ITV1... not at all good. You could tell they weren't used to dirty feeds.

The BBC Nations were very used to working with dirty feeds though.

A typical junction back in 2000 using a manual desk, no automation, would involve the following -

- write script, put tapes in machine & cue them, programme mixer desk, do line-up with Master Control Room and preview top and tail of local programme checking overall duration and end credit duration and have it cued on minus 20 clock, cue up slides and put CD on standby, calculate timings.

- performing a live voice over on end credits of a network programme (taking dirty network vision and clean feed of audio via a booked line routed to an outside source)

- cut back to the dirty feed before the end of the programme (as the clean audio feed had a glitch between cuts)

- mix to the dirty vision feed, with a mute audio source, and perform a live voice over on a book slide (if no local copy available).

- follow network director count in left ear, and stop talking by minus 1...

- then run local trail off Beta tape and cut to it before count reaches zero.

- when local trail finishes, cut cleanly back to dirty network feed, leading audio, to take network trail.

- at minus 1 count, cut to local slide and perform voice over

- when you hear in left ear that network announcer has stopped talking, lead audio from dirty network feed and then cut to feed cleanly to take another network trail.

- at minus 20 to the on-air time of local programme, shout "run vt" over talkback to Master Control Room.

- at minus 1 count from network director run and cut up BBC 1 symbol

- open mic, dip symbol music, perform voice over, lead audio to local programme at minus 3 seconds, stop speaking at minus one, cut or mix to programme as you fade out symbol music, close mic.

And that was just one junction. You'd then have a timeshift of several network programmes and trails, making sure that your timings got you back to the rejoin programme at exactly the right time.

I have to ask, Where did this Saturday football go on ITV before Sky took the lot in 1992?

I believe World of Sport did not show football that much? I know BBC always had the highlights of the games for the much of the time aswell. was it's the Auttum of 1992 when ITV had to found other stuff to fill up listings

I cant found much in the listings for football!

I'll try and keep this simple, from the 60s until the end of the 1979/80 season, ITV's football highlights programmes, ie when they were regional ones not one national programme were usually shown on a Sunday afternoon, probably around 2/3pm. In the late 70s when Michael Grade was head of LWT he tried poach all Football League rights, giving ITV exclusive coverage, the BBC were shocked as were the general British public, it also lead to the classic headline 'Snatch of the Day', as a result of this the BBC and ITV came to do a deal to carrying on sharing rights, but from the 1980/81 season onwards they would alternate the Saturday night/Sunday afternoon slot, this carried on until the end of 1982/83 season.

From the 1983/84 season onwards Highlights were becoming old tat and Live games were being shown for the first time, although not many were shown, again it was a BBC/ITV split, I can't tell what days they were on as I'm not sure myself but ITV usually had Sunday afternoon games. Again this agreement carried on for a few years with some disputes between the Broadcasters and the Football League on the way, which also lead to a total blackout of games from the first half of the 1985/86 season.

The rights came up again for the 1988/89 season and this time ITV got their way and got exclusive live rights to the Football league, and highlights which they showed on the programmes, matches and Regional News. Most of the time the games were shown on Sunday afternoons, usually at about 3.00pm or there abouts, although it wasn't uncommon to see a game or two appear on a weekday night. The BBC from this point onwards got the rights to the FA Cup and England games instead. 1992 came, BSkyB came along and the rest was history.

It's worth reading into properly, from how much there used to be on TV and how ridiculous the money is spent on it nowadays. ITV4 showed old editions of The Big Match and it's interesting to see how much has changed. Usually ESPN Classic shows old Football, and quite often they show a lot of old ITV games too.

From 1983/84, the Beeb and ITV had five live League games each, plus two each from the FA Cup - one had the third and fifth round, the other the fourth and sixth round. Initially the Beeb showed their live games on Friday nights and ITV on Sunday afternoons. The rest of the time, they would show highlights as usual, the Beeb on Saturday night and ITV on Sunday afternoon, but the live games were instead of, rather than in addition to, highlights. To take this back to the main point of the thread, 1983/84 also saw ITV highlights networked rather than in regional programmes, which also led to an industrial dispute so they couldn't show highlights for four months, although they could show live games.

After the 1985/86 blackout, the Beeb also moved their live games to Sunday afternoons, as Friday nights hadn't worked in ratings terms, and the broadcasters would generally take it in turns. From the start of 1986/87, highlights were more or less abandoned, and the Beeb and ITV usually took it in turns to show a live game on Sunday afternoons, with the other channel just not showing anything that weekend - apart from FA Cup weekends when one channel would show highlights and the other a live game.

For more on ITV football coverage, it's worth looking at this excellent site...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITVfootball68-83.html
including its section on the mid-eighties at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITV/BigMatch83-88.html

And I'll also plug my own stuff on the history of football on telly, which you can find here - http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/?page_id=72
End of advert.

Can I add my thanks to everybody who has contributed to what has become a fascinating thread - really interesting stuff, guys - thanks!

I second that, Steve. By the way, I stumbled across this clip from IBA Engineering Announcements in 1984 which mentions the SABRE link to the Channel Islands via France (at the time the feed was switched from Stockland Hill to Rowridge). It appears to be a partial recording, but still worth a watch.

I've also been meaning to ask how HTV worked, as both Bristol and Cardiff had their own continuity. Did both sub-regions have a full set of microwave links (ie. clean feeds of networked shows) or did one station receive a feed from the other (clean or semi-clean), similar to the YTV/TTT arrangement post 1993? Would a pan-regional locally-scheduled programme (eg. imported drama) be played out from Bristol or Cardiff?

I suspect that there would have been permanent circuits between Cardiff and Bristol, as well as each station having a feed of network programmes. This would give them the flexibility to do their own thing at each station, or pan-regional stuff as required.

I think I'm right in saying that until 405 switch off, HTV operated what they called a "General Service" as there was no sepearate Wales and West VHF transmissions. I'm not sure how much pan-regional stuff there was after this though - and presuambly anything shared between the two stations was 'networked' in the usual way by booking circuits. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread (which I too agree is the best thing on the forum in ages!) the ITV Contractors were not allowed to operate their own circuits, this had to be done by the Post Office / BT.

I forgot to say cheers for the football info.

Do I take it, it was not till sky come along that the number of games on tv shot up?

Yes, ITV's last deal was for 21 live games a season, mostly on Sunday afternoons. This is less than one a week, of course, so they tended not to show any until the clocks went back at the end of October, and stopped by the end of April.

When Sky started they were of course able to offer as many hours as possible so they had two live matches a week, every week, from August to May.

There were separate 405 line services for Wales and the Westcountry...both were transmitted from the St Hilary transmitter in South Wales....the Welsh service was on channel 7, the Westcountry service on channel 10. There were also 405 line transmitters for the Welsh service at Presely, Arfon, Moel-y-Parc, Abergavenny, Bala, Brecon, Ffestiniog, Llandovery and Llandrindod Wells. There was a 405 line relay for the West service at Bath.

But that wouldn't preclude HTV from having arranged with BT to have their two locations permanently linked, would it? Much like Central having permanent links from Nottingham to Birmingham, or TVS between Maidstone and Southampton, or would these have been booked on an as needed basis?