Mr.B's posts

Central Start Up Music

I believe it is! Originally uploaded to MHP, and if anyone's lucky enough to be a member there you might just happen upon an alternative mix (90 second version) and some of the matching stings...

A question about Swap Shop...

Well, Yes and No!

Originally Peter Tomlinson (who I interviewed for TiswasOnline and the ATV documentary that we're doing) was doing continuity in ATV Midlands at the weekends in the early 1970s. To cut a long story short, he had some time to fill between cartoons and episodes of Tarzan so he had the idea of running some small competitions and the response was unexpectedly large. They carried on with this idea over a few weeks and realised that if organised properly it had great potential. This was during the middle of 1973. I believe, from Peter, that he may have included the odd phone call within this sequence (unsurprisingly there were no examples of this period ever recorded).

When the decision was taken to make the Saturday Morning sequence into a 'stand alone' programme, Peter Harris (also extensively interviewed for our project!) was assigned to the project as Producer. Having next to no budget, they made use of Studio 3 at ATV in Birmingham, grabbed a desk and a few chairs from one of the offices (sometimes making use of parts of the ATV Today set if it was still standing in the studio) and from Jan 1974 launched it as a 'stand alone' programme billed as "Today Is Saturday or the Tis-was Show" (the title sequence showed both a "Today Is Saturday" caption and a chunky lettered "Tiswas" logo").

The show grew organically from then on, but never really had much of a budget to speak of until the so-called 'classic' period of 1979-80 onwards.

I guess you could compare it to the way that Philip Schofield's original Children's BBC links grew directly into "But First This" during the school holidays.

It was never a major 'phone-in' type of show, but it did do it before Swap Shop!

A question about Swap Shop...

Sorry I'm late...

I can only answer for Swap Shop and Tiswas. Tiswas began in Jan 1974 (only in the ATV area) and in the only surviving episode of the first 4 years (30th August 1975), a viewer is shown talking on the phone to John Asher. The Swappie began in October 1976 and as we know utilised phone calls from the outset.

CT's "Sorry Noel" on 'Reunited' was in answer to Noel's claim on 'It started with...' that Swap Shop was the first ever TV show for Kids on a Saturday Morning, when in fact Tiswas was almost 3 years old by the time Swap Shop came on air (LWT's 'Saturday Scene' and HTV's 'Orbit' beat Swap Shop to it too!).

Throughout the early years of Tiswas, they used a phone-in device called the "Welly-Phone" (a phone embedded in two conjoined welly-boots). A few years ago I interviewed Sally James for a radio special (still available online, by request ) and she remembered the welly-phone, but neither of us could remember why they used it!! No doubt though it was for the usual competition entries... questions to guests... etc... although it was all-but-entirely dropped by the time of the supposed 'classic' period (1979 onwards).

So, Tiswas was on-air with phones for almost 3 years before Swap Shop, but not across the whole country. Indeed Tiswas was never networked, here's the list of how it spread around the regions: http://www.tiswasonline.com/look_in.php?details=off
(full episode guide: http://tiswasonline.com/episode_guide.php )

All that said, The Golden Shot pipped the lot with the phones!!

North East Roundabout

As promised, I have details of when the programme will be airing... and some photos too...

I've posted it all here: http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/topic30763

Enjoy!

New Tom Coyne Radio Programme

As some of you may have seen in the requests forum, I recently asked for details of the theme to TTTV's North East Roundabout for a programme featuring Tom Coyne (Tyne-Tees/BBC Midlands) which is airing soon on the radio station I work at - http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/topic30639

I also promised to let you know when the programme will air, and it'll be this Thursday Night (25th February) 7-8pm with a repeat on Wednesday 3rd March, in the morning, 9-10am.

Here's the Press Release we've sent out:



You can listen to the show in the Wolverhampton area on 101.8 FM, or if you're outside the area then you can listen live online at www.wcrfm.com (click 'listen live').

Some photos from the recording:

http://wcrt.entadsl.com/cmsms/images/tom1.jpg
Tom Coyne in the Studio, just before recording commenced.

http://wcrt.entadsl.com/cmsms/images/tom2.jpg
Tom with "Inside Tracks" presenter Pete Whitehouse.

http://wcrt.entadsl.com/cmsms/images/tom3.jpg
Tom with me! I was a great fan of him on Midlands Today in the 70s!

http://wcrt.entadsl.com/cmsms/images/tom4.jpg
Tom with the Programme's Producer, BBC WM's very own Andy Walters (who also looks in on this forum occasionally!!)

It was really lovely to meet Tom - what a nice person - and I recognised his voice straight away!

Hope you enjoy the show!

Holiday Rock (Hi-De-Hi TV Theme Tune) - Paul Shane And The Y

Interesting little thing I discovered about the Hi-De-Hi theme recently. In the first series, the opening and closing themes were both sung by Ken Barrie (Postman Pat), have a listen and you can tell.

From Series 2 (or was it 3... I think it was 2) the closing theme was replaced by the commercially released recording (by "Paul Shane and The Yellowcoats", featuring Ruth Madoc) as posted above. It began, on TV, from 1'04" into the track. The opening theme, sung by Ken Barrie, remained throughout the whole series.

North East Roundabout

Wonderful, thanks to you both. Got that CD and Andrew Pilmer it is! Tom will be so pleased.

One thing, would this be the actual recording that was used on air? A fair assumption?

Either way, it'll do fer me fellas!

Cheers chaps, and I'll keep you informed about when the programme airs.

North East Roundabout

Here's an odd one, could be a challenge for someone...

As some of you know, I work for a radio station in Wolverhampton. We run a regular programme which is very similar to Desert Island Discs, in which local personalities come on the show to talk about their lives and play songs which mean something to them.

Coming soon we'll be featuring Tom Coyne who presented Midlands Today during the 1970s as well as numerous other regional programmes in other areas. Tom is retired and lives in Wolverhampton, hence his participation in this show. It'll be airing in early February, and if anyone's interested it'll be streaming online for those outside of Wolverhampton (www.wcrfm.com) - I'll try and let you know TX details when its scheduled.

Anyway, one of Tom's earlier jobs was on Tyne Tees's "North East Roundabout" a 1960s forerunner to "North East Tonight", and as one of his songs Tom has chosen the theme tune which to North East Roundabout which he remembers was called "Old Comrades". Apparently it's a carousel type of tune. Unfortunately its well before my time, so I wondered if anyone on here could throw a bit of light on it and perhaps point me in the right direction?

If anyone should have a clip of it (you never know), then that would be ever so useful so that we could track down a closely matching version (or even the real thing).

Or if it should happen to be library music, then obviously you can only send info details, but this is of course perfectly fine because we are fully licensed and can get hold of the track from whichever library its on.

By the way, just in case anyone wondered, we're sorted for the 1970s Midlands Today theme, "Sports Fever"!

Any help will be much appreciated!

EastEnders

Thanks for the download links, always appreciated.

You know, I can't make up my mind if this '2009 version' is a new recording, or simply a remix (with added flourishes) of the 1994 recording. I really like it though. The skip beat in the first bar is still there (as introduced in the 1994 version) but it's been toned down a bit... plus, it actually sounds in some parts as if it's been synchronised with 1984 original recording for a couple of bits.

In the bridge section which was crudely edited onto the end whistle (when the credits had to be shortened in the early 2000s), this new mix makes that join sounds smoother, and the rhythm track now seems to be actually "getting ready" for the jump to the whistle section. Even if it's a straightforward remix, I think Simon May's tried to do something a little clever and it works.

Not so keen on the new opening titles. They're simply on a par with what went before, but with a small amount of added cloud, and slightly different colouring. I have to say that I thought it looked like it was done on Powerpoint as it's not as smooth an animation as the previous one (quite jerky pull back at the end of the credits for example).

And here endeth the sermon!

You're watching Central

Just for info, you may be interested to learn that a freeware font based on the Central Television lettering was posted over on the ATV Land forums a couple of years ago. It was designed by Mark McMillan (who used to run APFS, and is a semi-regular over here I believe!!) It's currently included within Stuart Moore's ("Sslaxx") 'Mock Resources' download. It's as near as dammit!

http://www.atvland.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=79&start=15#p1395

ATV Centre, Birmingham...

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure who took the original photograph at the moment, but I do know that we've secured use of it for the forthcoming article on the site!

But it really is purely by chance that it was spotted. For a long time, we in the Production team had wondered whether it was actually still there, but we'd concluded that when the building 'changed hands' from ATV to Central, it would simply have been taken down and junked. Not so, as we now see, the whole thing was simply covered up with a fresh piece of aluminium, with the Central logos placed on top of that. It was there all the time - 28 years!

The way I understand it is that one of our forum members spotted it on another forum, or within somebody's recent collection of photographs on an image hosting site (you know, like flickr... or similar). Obviously in the production of a programme like this, we're keeping an eye on the ongoing status of the site. Following a brief discussion as to its validity, we concluded that it needed checking out quickly. At least if it were a hoax (and that was the growing assumption) we would know. So we got onto the developers, who as I said we've been working with closely for a long time, and arranged to go over to check it out. This all happened within the space of 3 days, and luckily you see the results.

ATV Centre, Birmingham...

Hey chaps, sorry to bump this thread, but I haven't been around for a while and I've only just noticed this thread. You may be interested to hear that the ATV sign/logo is alive and well (and has been repaired, as the demolition people actually broke it in two... as can just about see in the first 'rubble' photo!).

It was rescued from the rubble by a member of the ATVLAND.net forums. We spotted the logo in the rubble from the same photo shown above and quickly got on to the people who currently own the building (it hasn't been ITV for a number of years). Thankfully they were more than happy for us to go along and collect it... so we did. That's not me in the photo BTW, it's one of the chaps who helped obtain the logo, which is now in the safekeeping of another member of the team based in Manchester.

We got onto this quite quickly. You see I'm actually serving as Producer of a new video documentary about the ATV Centre, being made by the team on ATVland.net - it's an in depth look at the actual history of the Centre as a production facility, concentrating on the people who worked there. We're filming many interviews with famous people and behind-the-scenes staff alike, and we're hoping to feature footage of the Centre in action dating from many years ago up until the present day (some of you may have seen a clip of me re-visiting the Centre in a Central News report - on Tiswasonline.com - we got a good deal of footage in the can on that day I can tell you!) and so obviously we've been in close contact with the developers of the site for a long time.

As for the logo/sign itself, it made its first official public appearance at the recent ATV Land met-up, last Sunday, in Birmingham (photos on the ATV Land forum). It's being cleaned up, safely repaired, and remounted on a new background soon, and hopefully will be making an appearance at future meetings too (it'll no doubt be there for the Programme's launch party... as and when).

As I say, more details about the programme and the logo (article coming soon) via the site and forums at ATVLAND.net

Hope you guys don't mind the site plug!