Baroness Trumpington's posts, page 9

Life on Mars

Yes. In the sixties too. Not that I would remember any such thing of course.

The football violence episode had glimpses of some very 1990s looking air-con units on the outside wall of a building. But that's more than made up for by the great display of old cars and outfits. I'm loving the look of this show.

It's 11 O'Clock (Twice!!)

When I was in Pres at the Beeb, the rule was that both the Network Director and the Announcer checked the captions before the junctions. A good extra check in case the graphics people had experienced an attack of illiteracy when putting them together. Of course in those days (blows cobwebs off ancient history book) we had enough people in the gallery to give attention to this sort of thing. Nowadays it is more likely to be one stressed person and a computer!

BBC Network Rebrand

Ain't that the truth! Martin Lambie Nairn was onto a real winner for many years. Go to the Beeb, sell them a rebrand, stay on contract as a consultant, pop up again a couple of years later and say "this branding's looking a bit tired mate - tell you what, why don't I sort you out with something new?". Repeat as required, pocket wads of cash. Of course this approach works best if you sell them something that goes out of fashion really quickly. Especially something with people in it! Presumably Red Bean Media have learned this trick from Lambie Nairn and are putting it into practice with ITV's rebrand.

What has happened to ITV Continuity?

What has happened to ITV Continuity?

A little bird tells me that the ITV team are under the worst sort of management pressure at the moment - "leaders" who make it clear they don't think much of what you're doing, but who also don't have any positive suggestions as to what it is they DO want. Result = demoralised workforce.

Exactly the same happened at BBC TV Centre some years ago, with the same bad results both on and off air.

A look inside the Broadcast Centre

Pam Masters' first big white elephant. The amount she squandered on it, in the face of opposition from those who knew the BBC Pres operation better than she did (she'd recently arrived from Channel 4 and thought she knew it all) should have brought a halt to her rise in the BBC empire. Sadly it didn't.

Problems on BBC ONE

Poor love! Now try speaking while vision and sound mixing plus listening to network sound and the London network director's countdown....oh yes and watching network's vision on preview so you can see when it's clean to join. No wonder the regional announcers used to end up going bonkers!

children in need

Cracking legs though.....according to my keenly trained observer, who seemed to be paying a bit too much attention, thankyou!

BBC One Continuity

Au contraire, my dear. Pick your announcer with care and enjoy the fact that they won't finish before the required time. The fact that you have to count them down is only a minor inconvenience!

What up with BBC One playout?

Oh yes it did! Broadcasting House Switching Centre for one.

What up with BBC One playout?

Typical of today's breed of jumped-up know-it-all techno freaks who think a whizz bang computer system is the be all and end all of broadcasting. Radio and TV have had muted alarms in live mic areas for decades, but the lot who rule the roost nowadays think everything "old" doesn't count any more. End of old-fart rant.

MOTD2 Technical Fault

Sometimes the true explanation can turn out to be quite bizarre. I recall an incident where Grandstand on BBC1 suddenly cut to bars. The cause? A bored person at one end of the gallery was asked by another bored person at the other end of the gallery to chuck the newspaper over. The paper was duly rolled up and thrown. As it passed over the tx mixer, it unrolled and fell down, neatly hitting the Bars button on the on-air bank. You couldn't have done it if you'd tried!