BBC News nostalgia, including BBC World

It probably got more viewers at that time on BBC One than if it had been on at 8pm on News 24 only

On those nights BBC One had closed down by then, a lot rarer in those days

They're called astons. But that's the only election they've shown on Parliament which they've shown as a clean version with no captions.

They did release an hour long compilation of that election on VHS so maybe that was always the plan and they decided to record a clean version to make it easier to edit that, and then that's the one they've always used for the repeats.

Still, they should have recorded a fully-"astoned" version of the election night coverage.

But I liked Peter Snow's graphical presentation. It seemed to be the first time where they used 3D graphics.

They almost certainly did. But the astonless/clean version of that output has been used for whatever reason (by accident or otherwise) and that's how it stays whenever it gets wheeled out.

Indeed, there's probably a couple of versions in the archive, but the clean version is presumably the one they've had cleared for compliance and so on, and got in a broadcast-suitable format, so it's easy enough to show that one again rather than dig around the archive for another one.

Most industry professionals still say “Aston”, which was the prominent caption generator for decades in the U.K. Less commonly you’ll hear “lower third”, “super”, “cap gen” or “CG”. Increasing in use, I think, is simply “strap”. Top left or right captions, on screen the whole time, are often referred to as “bug” whereas a station identifier logo is a “dog” (Digital Onscreen Graphic). I think bug comes from the fact that a leading bit of kit that put them on screen was named “Bug Burner”.

I suspect Aston and Chyron are like Autocue and Teleprompter, proper nouns for the UK and US companies respectively that provided the services they were known for?

Quantel was also used for DVE transitions back in the day, using the names of specific hardware, rather than the concept being asked for.

They've been recording "clean" versions since the 1987 election at least, as I've seen the infamous clip of David Dimbleby caught with his mars bar both with and without the result caption at the bottom on different programmes:



When they showed the 2001 election, the quality was awful. Clearly from a composite source and recorded on an analogue format (lots of dot crawl and analogue video dropouts), hard to tell if the large amount of artifacting was from BBC Parliament using a low bitrate, or if it had been recorded off-air. The start of the morning portion was missing the first few minutes too and they used the clean version before an abrupt cut to the dirty one part way through William Hague's resignation speech. Clearly they only recorded the dirty feed in a lower quality, presumably they gave the clean version higher priority for recording (but presumably BBC Parliament used the dirty one even if it was lower quality, as it's easier to follow with the graphics- that's always one of the issues when they show 1997).

1979 and 1997 were the first two GEs BBC Parliament ever showed, presumably at that time they were less bothered about getting the "as broadcast" version, and they wouldn't have known at the time how many people would watch or that they'd ever show any more, so I guess they'd have put minimal effort into it. They're clearly still using the same edits of the elections they made way back in 2002- complete with very thin black bars at the top and bottom of the picture!

In 2003 we got the 1970 and Feb 74 elections, they were meant to show the 83 election as well, but Parliament came back a few days early so it got pulled, and for some reason wasn't shown until 2006 (by which time they'd shown the 55, 64, 66 and 87 elections, the 75 referendum and repeated the 70, 79 and 97 ones again. I've always wondered why they sat on 83 for so long after it was originally meant to be shown, they'd have had it edited and ready to go, so seems strange they left it 3 years and showed every other election, apart from 1959 and 1992, and repeated some others, before finally showing it).

Actually there is one thing about the 1959 election I'm wondering, the first time BBC Parlaiment showed it, it began and ended with David Dimbleby who explained they couldn't show the morning coverage, as it doesn't exist. But at least some of it DOES exist, as there's a clip of a reporter running round trying (and failing) to get people to talk to him I've seen numerous times (including shown as part of the 1979 election night), so at least some of it must exist. But presumably not enough for them to feel it's worth broadcasting. There's clearly at least a couple of hours missing (or that BBC Parliament chose not to broadcast) from the overnight coverage too going by the views of the clock we get during the programme.

I wonder if there is any channel who will show the archive ITN election night coverage, with their first election being 1959.