30 years since the Late late breakfast show was ended

And when it comes to caribiner clips, it was using only one of those during a stunt that caused the death of wrestler Owen Hart at a WWE event 13 years later, I believe.

Im sure some safety guy told the BBC to get stuff, after he demanded certain stuff be used including bigger safety airbag,

A slight diversion to the continuity announcement in the clip linked in the original post - I was quite surprised to see the CEEFAX 888 caption appearing part way through the announcement.

Now according to http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/bbc1_85.htm the COW generator units had a control which switched in that caption. Was there a remote control for that in Con, or did somebody have to go to the apps room before each junction to switch it as appropriate for the following programme?

I'm pretty sure those options could be remotely switched on and off as required. On the later globe, 'Subtitles' and 'Stereo' were optional extras, plus I think, 'South East', as NC1/2 used to announce regional programmes once everyone else had opted out. I don't think there were separate South East symbols recorded on the laserdiscs... I'm sure some one will correct me if I'm wrong. I think the clock generators could add all of those options too as required.

Laser discs were recorded clean and distributed clean. The BBC logo and regional identifier were added by a local graphics and keyer combo (IPK LogoGen or LogoGen 2 from memory) which was part of the laser disc set-up. Memory is hazy but it could be that there was a Logo Gen used for the original blue/gold globe, and a LogoGen 2 for the CRV laser disc system. I'm sure if someon has the time to scour 'Eng Inf' online they will see something on it. (*) You could add or remove the keyed logo manually - and select which of multiple logos were inserted - as well as which track on the laser disc was cued and run. Many regions used the spare space on the discs for their titles or other sequences (it was effectively a nice, easy-to-cue, titles player).

(*) The idents weren't played from consumer laser disc players (good though they were). Instead Sony's CRV which was a component analogue optical recording system was used. This was a WORM system (Write Once, Read Many) - which meant the discs were not erasable but were designed to be mastered and then played frequently. They were far more resilient than tape - though as they aged they did suffer from drop-out.

Regions got players, but Network had a few recorders in London, so whenever a region needed to add a new ident (or titles) to their discs they would send someone down to do it at a booking in London.

BBC News also used the CRV players for playing titles, and the animated slaved backgrounds for the 'Virtual Blue' One/Six/Nine (and Business Breakfast, Breakfast News for a while) as well as the backgrounds for the all CSO/Chromakeyed 'Working Lunch' original look. They continued with the CRVs for titles well into the 00s - when they were replaced by a BBC in-house player called 'Stingray'. (English regions got a replacement for their CRVs called Vera - a nod to the original ill-fated BBC VTR)

Think it was a separate logo generator, which could be remotely controlled. Not sure if the key/fill were switched or if key masks were switched in and out.

The Eng Inf article suggests that the captions were generated by the hardware as the globe itself

http://www.bbceng.info/Designs/designs_technology/new_world.htm

Having had a chance to play with a COW, I recall there being a switch on the front panel which switched, in that particular case, a 'MIDLANDS' line on and off. It wouldn't surprise me if a remote control could be added.

This page on The Television Room show a little more about how it worked - by turning other switches off, you could remove the land, sea, or black background.

as for Health and Safety - well, it kind of wasn't really a thing, was it? deejay mentioned a Blue Peter presenter cleaning the face of Big Ben on just a bosun's chair, but that's how the window cleaners would have done it too. The modern culture of risk assessing everything might get some stick for being a bit boring, but it's obviously had an effect given that this kind of thing just doesn't happen anymore, and people are far less likely to get killed or injured at work

As I mentioned in the previous thread about this from 5 years ago, there was another accident involving the Late Late Breakfast Show. Unfortunately the YouTube clip is offline due to a channel 4 copyright claim(!) but basically it was cars jumping over a row of cars to see who could get the furthest. It was live on the programme, first car went towards the crowd, the second right at the end of the show did the same but the driver was injured and hospitalised. John Peel was presenting the item and his autobiography mentions it - his wife and kids were watching it at the time and didn't know of he was OK.

Anyway, I recently saw the opening of the next episode. In it Noel opens with a little speech updating us about the injured driver and his regret and apologies that such a thing happened on a family show. I'm not sure how much they restrained their ambitions after that, at least in the short term.

It could have been a much sooner and much more horrific axe for the programme. The item itself just looks so odd from today's eyes. It would never be done at all these days let alone live on primetime TV. Also it just kind of happens with little dramatic build up and ironically there's not the sense of jeopardy that everything gets today

There's a link in this thread to an older thread on the same topic, and there's a post in it with videos from the episode.

Oh yeah, didn't scroll down. Hope I described it accurately!

As I say the next episode is interesting too, though it's not out in the wild as far as I know