The Wales Thread

HTV has gone from Mold now.

Wrexham is the new North East Wales base.

Such a horrible word isn't it -- Mold.

Paul Mewies used to be NE correspondent, I assume he's moved to this new place in Wrexham -- last time I saw him was for the postman murder a few weeks back.

Wonder if there's a hierarchy in the regional offices? Doesn't seem to be. Sarah Hibbard moved from Swansea to The Ferret, and Richard Nosworthy is there now, also an occasional newsreader. But then Carole Green is quite senior, and still reads the news, but is tucked away in Colwyn Bay.

I didnt realise they had closed the office at Mold - I guess if they have one at Colwyn Bay and Wrexham then they dont really need another one in North Wales.

I cant believe we have Richard Nosworthy as our reporter here in Swansea - couldnt we have someone decent like Justina or Tara or anyone but Horseworthy. If Justina was based in Swansea id be more likely to bump into her!

Carole Green has been with HTV for a few years but only recently has read news bulletins. She also does lots of reporting for the main 6pm programme.

I think the most senior reporters are Andy Collinson, Jo Kiernan, Helen Callahan and Catherine Evan-Williams as usually they all do the major stuff and never read the news - just do reporting. Jo is the Political editior which is very senior and Lee is political correspondant, Andy is the official "Chief Reporter" and Catherine is also chief reporter in all but name.

TV D I like the bit in the title - Wales is a nation but also a region - thats very true!

As regional centres are being discussed thought this may be of interest, its taken from Television & Radio 1982

" New centres, notably at Mold, augment HTV's production capacity. Mold has two studios and there are news studios at the satellite centres of Bangor and Carmarthen."

It also states in the book that programmes were produced at the Mold centre (which was based at Theatr Clwyd), including a Welsh language magazine programme called "Hamdden" which was presented by Elinor Jones.

I did not realise Mold was a production centre, I though it was just an office based at Theatr Clwyd. By the way, I recently went past Theatr Clwyd and noticed there was no HTV logo signs on the building (or certainly ones that were noticable), which is the opposite of how it used to be. Even the Wrexham office has a large HTV logo on the side of the building.

On a different note, went through some old video tapes the other night and on one and a half tapes were recordings of the HTV 30th birthday celebration programmes ( I actually managed to capture all the episodes that were made), which were presented by Arfon and transmitted sometime in 1998 (summer time I think). I completley forgot I had these. It made interesting viewing. One episode was dedicated to the news service HTV had provided and it was good to see some old footage of Report Wales, Y Dydd and Wales at Six along with its presenters and reporters. Also they covered some of the major stories that have happenned and it was definatley a case of "Oh yeah, I remember that ". It also sounded as if it was much more complex to put together the news programme in the "old" days than it is now. Everything that was filmed was in a negative format and had to be converted for transmission, and everything had to be done in both Welsh and English for both news programmes. As all film had to be "played" from Cardiff one of the former Editors joked that he used to pray nothong major would happen in North Wales after midday because it would have been a struggle to get it ready for the 6pm broadcast!!

That is a reference back to the delightful Katherine. When HTV won their RTS award last spring, oooo, should we call it jealousy..? -- well, either way, Look North apparently ought to have won, being the superior programme, of course -- and a week or two of "it's not a region though, me and my dad discussed this, it's a country! it's a nation!" arguments ensued with me, Whataday and probably a few others. Needless to say non-Welsh parties seemed to have a complete block in their brains in accepting that, in terms of ITV and the RTS, Wales [and Northern Ireland] is a region. Oh.. that was lots of fun.



Ah yes, Wales Today said a very similar thing last autumn when they celebrated their 40 years of news making. It was a very difficult job to get reports from around the country in time, indeed. I've still got that on tape, hopefully it'll be as interesting as your 1998 tape sounds. I know reporters spent long periods of time away from home, sort of going round the country town by town, but that's not really practical for breaking and unpredictable news stories, just the stories of interest and magazine article-type reports.

1982, eh? God, that's a long while ago in the Welsh tv world scheme of things -- how many things were different then! Interesting to note that Mold is now closed and Bangor also, perhaps North Wales output can't really be sustained easily?

You have the 1998 30-year celebrations on tape, then..? Tell me -- do you have a capture card..?

TV Dragon,

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a capture card?

I am a complete technophobe when it comes to computers.

Boy I feel like a right "twpsyn" typing the above for everyone to read

TV D I remember those arguments over the RT Award - I remember I posted something like "Well done HTV" and Katherine snapped back something like "Its a nation not a region" LOL So it was you that was arguing with her was it? I cant remember who it was but I do remember a big issue about it! I dont think I really posted on here much then, I think I joined around Christmas 2001 so I was around.


I remember those programmes HTV broadcast for the 30th Birthday in 1998 - Wiggy did indeed present them and they looked back at loads of HTV News and programmes over the years. I hope they run a simular series for the 40th Birthday in 2008! Only 5 years to wait - or better still the 35th Birthday in May 2003 _ I think May is the month HTV launched?

I also remember loads of special idents with "HTV 30" on them. Although the reality is now ITV1 Wales is the region they may not bother celebrating.

It was mainly Whataday having the argument, IIRC, but I was hiding behind him, sort of poking out to say, "Yeah..!" and then hiding again. Most of the Welsh people stood with reason and tried to explain -- she was having none of it!
I wonder if her ears are burning.. I don't think Whataday does Saturdays on here, so maybe he'll comment when he does arrive.

Sorry, aberoutsidehalf -- I meant a tv card, for making captures from tv or video or dvd or anything like that. I can't do fancy clips like some can, I've not really explored that far.. Just captures from the tv -- it's a little box that plugs into your tv, or video or digibox or a combination of them, and goes into your PC and you open the program and watch tv on your PC and can take still captures or capture clips. You can get tv card for inside your PC tower if you wanted to rather open it up.
Let's you put all sort of pretty pictures on here, like this one of Nicola from last October's archive programme, and a pic of S4C's second most rubbish ident, the Speaker Dragon ~

http://members.lycos.co.uk/tindragon/HTVNicola2.jpg http://members.lycos.co.uk/tindragon/S4CSpeaker6.jpg

Thanks TV Dragon for the explination

Stil a little but I think I get the jist of it. No I have'nt got one, but I think I'll get one as it'll probably be useful for contributions to this thread. Also how do you go about putting pictures on the posts (sorry I'm asking all these questions but I'm really am that useless when it comes to computers ) . I'm asking this as I have quite a few pictures/images from various HTV programme reviews of the 1980's and other HTV/TWW images from other texts that may be of interest to everyone.

Having recently had a spring clean, I have come across a load of HTV "stuff " that I collected as a youngster from the 80's. I even came across an invitation card to the tour of Culverhouse Cross from around 1985ish. Can just about remember the tour ( I was about 10). Met most of the HTV personalities of the time along with members of the Robin of Sherwood cast and had a go of reading the news from behind " the newsdesk ", eventhough HTV News was based at the old Pontcanna site ( until 1992 IIRC)

No - why is it horrible? - perhaps you may like Yr Wyddgrug better.

Paul Mewies is the NE Wales reporter.
Didn't you see him reporting the dreadful story of the 4 kids and dad gassed in a car on the Horseshoe Pass on both HTV and ITN?
In contrast on Friday he did an item on the opening of a renovated section of the Montgomery Canal - lots of pretty pix of canal boats etc.

I met this woman at work in London once who asked where I was from -- since I usually speak with my telephone voice to people I've never met at work [let's face it, people hear a hint of a Welsh accent and make a judgement..] -- I said originally from the bad place and that I was moving back to Swansea etc. She said that she lived in Mold and had moved there from the North West, and said they're *ever so* Welsh there and they all speak 'the Welsh', and she hears it's much more Welsh than the south, or wherever it is Carmarthenshire is..

People in Mold probably don't even know what the Welsh for 'Mold' is, the original name for it, let alone be able to approach pronouncing Yr Wyddgrug.. She was talking complete crap, although I didn't say as much to her -- a good proportion of Flintshire and Denbighshire are English, and not that many speak Welsh. Not that it's a problem, but God knows where the word Mold came from, probably to help the English people that moved there, but it doesn't sound very nice.

That's all I was saying -- was that the town Mold sounds like the English word, 'mould', which isn't a very nice word and it's what I think of when I hear the town Mold. Like Skegness, Grimsby and Hull -- they all sound horrible in title. I've only been to Hull, and I wasn't impressed..

I did see Paul Mewies report on the Llangollen deaths in hindsight -- although I wasn't sure that it wasn't Ian Lang who had come across to report on it. I remember Paul now standing on a hill overlooking the passing point where the incident took place.




Yeah, firstly the image has to be online somewhere. If it's something you're scanning it in, you need to upload it to some webspace if you have it already. Or there are servers that give you free webspace.

Then, all you do is take the URL address and put it between the [ img ] [ /img ] tags -- but no spaces in the square brackets. I just did that so it will show.

So my Nicola pic is ~ [ img ] http://members.lycos.co.uk/tindragon/HTVNicola2.jpg [ /img ] -- which shows up as the picture above.

Just with no spaces

How come that pic of Nicola has the current HTV Wales News dog on it - Nicola left long before the revamp in 2001. Was it an old clip they played on HTV News or something