BBC Parliament - Election 1992

as



puts it.

Now on.

Technically it's a day out as the 1992 election was held on the 9th of April, not the 8th.

So looking through the results (heck, I don't think we need spoiler tags somehow ) I see they predicted a hung parliament in 1992. And got it wrong. Just like 2015's election polls. Some things never change

Wasn't that the last election poll to be conducted separately by the broadcasters?

Despite the fact that it's from 1992, a lot of the graphics on this look better than some of the graphics that have been appearing on the BBC over the last few years.

Interesting to see the change in how live/location graphics are used too. Back then, they had a big BBC logo and location identifier, which only appears for a few seconds before fading out (and no 'LIVE' graphic). Now the graphics are a lot smaller but permanently on screen.

Yes - 1987 had very clean graphics, but by 1992 they were really getting used cleanly, consistently, and told the story really effectively. The design was also really consistent. Technologically it's fascinating how they were implemented : http://www.bbceng.info/Eng_Inf/EngInf_49.pdf has a good article.



I think historically the OB hubs (at TVC there were usually one or two other galleries upstream of the main studio gallery lining up and switching OBs through to the main gallery. There were similar operations in Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham.) These hubs often added the live / location graphics, and they were added using a standard Caption Generator, not a computer graphics system, and had quite limited facilities (Aston Caption/4 in 1992 I expect, though Motif may just have arrived) There were ways of computer controlling Astons by that time though.

Also - most locations will only have had a single cap gen - so if the location caption had been permanently kept up, it would have been tricky to cut between OBs in the same gallery (as you couldn't cut between two different location graphics easily) These days with automation you can do cleverer things.

Another issue - is that if you key in the location up-stream, it will shrink when you do result push-backs, and potentially be cropped if the DVE box isn't 4:3.

What is very nice is the consistent graphic look the 1992 Election has. Also nice to see touches like the Glasgow studio having similar set pieces to London.

Interesting from

In #election92 was Basildon producer. Tipped off that Tories had won. Shouted "Tell London Major's back". Noone listened so became reporter

— Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) April 8, 2017

No, that was 2001. 2005 was joint BBC/ITN, 2010 I think Sky came on board too.

Strange thing is the exit polls have been pretty good since 1997, Of course it been pointed out the 2015 election around 11 seats could have gone either way because overall the combined Maj of all 11 is 956c I think the rules of thumb is, if your not sure understatement.

The Labour London targets graphic just now had a small square in the very bottom right hand corner of the screen, alternating between red, green and blue. Presumably this would have been hidden on TVs of the era with overscan, so I wonder what internal usage it had.

I think this was the best thing to come from that election:

Of course the North West Durham result saw two current party leaders defeated:

25 years ago today, me and the PM heading for defeat...but both sporting Rick Astley's hairdo pic.twitter.com/EsU1xkNFQ0

— Tim Farron (@timfarron) April 8, 2017

John Prescott looking a bit blurry earlier.