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1979 ITV Strike - affect on sport and schools

(January 2012)

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RO
robertclark125
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
I might be wrong, but I think anyone taking an OB truck to another country simply wasn't done until the late 80s/90s ?

They almost certainly wouldn't have in the days before transportable satellite links. In this particular case how would a Danish OB truck get the pictures back to Denmark without the co-operation of the BBC or ITV?


If it had been Wembley, were there not permanent GPO lines from there back to the tower in those days ? if not, then yes, I agree, they'd have been stuffed.


The only other way I could think was for Danish TV to hire in BBC cameras and OB truck to do it. Thing is, would the ACTT have allowed it, even though the game wasn't being broadcast in the UK?
MA
Markymark
robertclark125 posted:
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:
I might be wrong, but I think anyone taking an OB truck to another country simply wasn't done until the late 80s/90s ?

They almost certainly wouldn't have in the days before transportable satellite links. In this particular case how would a Danish OB truck get the pictures back to Denmark without the co-operation of the BBC or ITV?


If it had been Wembley, were there not permanent GPO lines from there back to the tower in those days ? if not, then yes, I agree, they'd have been stuffed.


The only other way I could think was for Danish TV to hire in BBC cameras and OB truck to do it. Thing is, would the ACTT have allowed it, even though the game wasn't being broadcast in the UK?


The Beeb union at the time was the ABS, ITV was ACTT, but if we haven't been in the realms of fantasy up until now in this thread, I think we are now !
IS
Inspector Sands
Markymark posted:

If it had been Wembley, were there not permanent GPO lines from there back to the tower in those days ? if not, then yes, I agree, they'd have been stuffed.

Even so, I'd imagine that the GPO's unions would have been in the position to block it if they so wanted
MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
Markymark posted:

If it had been Wembley, were there not permanent GPO lines from there back to the tower in those days ? if not, then yes, I agree, they'd have been stuffed.

Even so, I'd imagine that the GPO's unions would have been in the position to block it if they so wanted


Quite so ! In fact GPO industrial action did affect programming in the late 70s too. I remember BBC Cricket coverage one summer (1980 ?) had no audio. There were all sorts of strange post and telecommunications rules in those days I recall ? If it wasn't feasible for the GPO to provide a landline, then, and only then were the BBC, IBA, or ITV companies permitted to use their own microwave link kit. For the cricket coverage, the BBC used their own SHF link for video, but audio had to be over landlines, (because the GPO could do the latter, but not the former)
It sounds bizarre today, but that's the sort of nonsense that occurred. In the case of the GPO dispute, I think the BBC unions blacked the use of Sound in Syncs, that would have enabled the broadcasts to carry audio, so instead music was played over the pictures. There was no radio coverage at all of course !
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Presumably the unions would also have intervened if they had tried to do off-screen commentary from TV Centre?
MA
Markymark
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Presumably the unions would also have intervened if they had tried to do off-screen commentary from TV Centre?


Probably, I do remember some captions though, giving batsmen and bowler details etc
RO
robertclark125
There's actually a video somewhere on TV-ark where the BBC2 announcer apologises for there being no highlights of the B&H cup final, due to a GPO dispute, and so a caption with the scorecard was put up, and the announcer (Peter Blogar I think) read out the result.

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