The TV Question Amnesty Thread

The laughter you hear on sitcoms is actually everyone in the continuity suite watching it whilst leaving the microphone up. It’s cheaper than getting a proper audience in.

The really good ones will make the tea too.

Writing their scripts, previewing programmes they are required to promote. BBC announcers Duncan Newmarch and Peter Offer explain it quite well in this video.



In the BBC nations, it’s quite different as the announcers are also network directors (or transmission controllers) and are responsible for coming in and out of circuit (ie opting in and out) and playing the trails, idents etc.

On the subject of continuity announcers, why is it that the UK is one of the few countries (that I’m aware of) who have retained live (or even recorded) announcements into programmes. Compare the UK approach to continuity with that of places like the USA or Australia where any announcements are in the form of “in your face” voiceovers and promos, and nowadays there’s literally no junction at all - end credits flash by in a small panel while an ECP/promo plays and then straight into the next show, often without even an ident. There’s no live announcer and even the pre-recorded VOs are more concerned with promoting other shows than “what’s on next”. In this day and age, there’s little need for “now at ten o clock it’s time for the news” or “Emmerdale’s back the same time tomorrow, stay with us for Coronation Street after the break”.

Thanks, Si-Co.

I have a question for fellow TV Forumers. Have you ever gone behind the scenes of a TV show/channel and if so, what was it like?

How many newsreaders write their own scripts? This is one I've wondered about for a while, because AIUI, some news organisations require the anchors to write all their own intros, whereas others tend to utilise separate scriptwriters, whilst still giving the anchors some input on what they read, as described by Mark Austin in this interview.

Another question I’ve been wondering: these days, is anything on TV still played off VT or film?

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a query on the modified STV Enterprises endboard shown on the series 2 episode 35 of What's Up Doc,
(from about 52:54):



Does anyone know why this was used? It seemed a little dramatic at the time, and it still does. It could have been something to do with the "runaway tank" bit (skip back to 52:53), but even so it still looks a bit out of place.

Grueling, they expected me to work and everything

Bet the talented ones could do their own test tones like this back in the day too

I’m not sure if you in the UK have access to May Day / Air Disasters / Air Crash Investigations. But my father was invited back in 2017 to give an investigators account of the sinking of FV Alaska Ranger for a spin off Disasters at Sea. He is a US Coast Guard Civilian as a “Senior Marine Casualty Analyst”, has has a commercial chief engineers license and was one of the investigators on site.

I tagged along and they interviewed him for about an hour in the upstairs portion of a old firehouse turned bar in Washington, DC. It was set up with a Arri Alexa Mini, a Sony Mirrorless camera for stills, two standard chairs and two lighting scrims. All in all it was about three people there aside from my father, a USCG PR person and myself. There was the producer, a DP and a EP who did audio. In all it was fairly benign as it was just questions being asked with production having to stop periodically for a motorcade or helicopters flying over.

Click over to my Instagram to what the final on air product looked like and the actor they had depicting my father,

Live film TK to air - never. Well, certainly I’ve never seen it happen in my career. It did happen routinely until the early 90s I would say. (I saw it happen, for example, when I was on work experience at Granada in 1990)

Live VT roll to air still happens occasionally as far as I understand but is increasingly rare.

I suppose the modern equivalent would be a live roll to air from an edit suite - of a very late edit. That still happens quite a lot in news, and occasionally to playout for programmes.

It may still happen for as-live shows that haven't been edited and are played from site/studio, rather than delivered in advance. If you have an HD Cam SR VTR and tape stock - there's little point not using it.

However these days, now VT is no longer acceptable to many broadcasters for delivery of recorded shows, or archive copies of programmes-as-broadcast recordings, it is probably more common to play from server. (EVS being the common system used for general production)