Alright On The Night

The 25th anniversary actually happened last year! The first one went out on September 18th, 1977 and the Silver Jubilee was marked with Alright 15 - "Silver Jubilee Special" - on September 14th, 2002. The first one evidently hasn't been scrubbed as a small piece of it featured on number 15.

They aren't LWTs (the production company/broadcaster) studios. They like were spun off into a seperate company called 'The London Studios' as part of the pre-franchise reorganisation in the early 1990s. They're not the only ones, Granadas studios in Manchester are part owned by the BBC through a company called '360media' , The BBCs studios have been spun off into BBC Resources. This does mean that the studios can be hired by anyone (not just TV production companies) not just the company in the same building.

Programmes have always had to pay for a studio in one way or another, a programmes budget is not unlimited.

Or it could be because The London Studios were fully booked.

The thing is about IBAOTN is that it's just a man standing talking to an audience, there's no reason why it has to be in London or any particular studio - even the set is constructed specially.

That reminds me, Larry - one of the "Alright" specials last year, More Kids, was recorded at 360media, which would mean that it was recorded at Manchester.

The programme doesn't half get about! South Bank, Northam, Manchester, Great Cockup, Haymarket Theatre, Bermuda Triangle.....

Anybody remember the Spitting Image take-offs of Denis Norden?
<"If you're one of those people who's one of those people, then you're one of those people who's one of those people.">

Class!

I'm sure that in the early ones - plus a great chunk of Cockup Trip - Denis sat down to address the audience. From the two clips I've seen of the early ones, which were featured in later editions, I don't think there was even a set to start with!

The use of a new set and new opening titles for each edition is an "Alright" trademark, though it's mostly used the same title music since 1990 (IBAOTN 6). Hard to believe that the current theme tune is in fact 13 years old...!

I don't know if this is the same for The South Bank Studios, but even though Granada's studios are really 3SixtyMedia's (Granada and BBC) it still has G R A N A D A T V on the outside, which has been there since the 1950's, but are the South Bank studios indentified? But in a way you can't blame Granada for Manchester, as they make bugger all there, as Corrie has it's own set and then after that there is relatively little. But for those who don't know, that the indoor filming for Phoenix Nights is done at Granada, but if you have the DVD Peter Kay just calls it Granada and not 3SixtyMedia. Plus didn't Question Time come from Granada when it was at Manchester?

There's quite a few purple GR/N/D/ signs around, but there's one old sign which says something like "Property Of London Weekend Television".

Yes, there is a big sign outside: 'LONDON STUDIOS' with logo and another down the road that swaps between 'GMTV' and 'LONDON STUDIOS AUDIENCE ENTRANCE'

The foyer has logos of all the companies that reside in the building

I take it one of those clips is the one where a "young me" (Denis said that ) is explaining the setup, which is basically the TV company has an expensive satellite link-up to a racetrack and they want to film some reaction to the race but nobody there talks English and there's loads of problems and when they finally get somebody to start an interview, the satellite airtime runs out.

If so, you can see quite clearly in that archive footage of Denis that the audience is behind him as he looks to camera.



13yrs old? Well it fits in, you can almost sing the title of the show to the last few notes of the theme.

Sorry, I'll get my coat...

Yep - this was during 21 Years of Alright on the Night when Denis introduced the footage with: "to explain it, here's the young fella who was doing it back in 1979..." - sheer class!

I noticed that as well - I think it wasn't until Alright 3 that they started using sets.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but how many DTT boxes other than mine (Goodmans GDB3) actually provide proper ratio switching?

Some have a straight 4:3/16:9 switch, some have a 4:3/'letterbox' (which could be 14:9 or 16:9 depending on the AFD) switch. Mine however has a simple 3 way 4:3/14:9/16:9 switch so you can select the format at will regardless of the AFD being transmitted. It keeps everyone happy and I'm surprised more boxes don't feature it.

This is also posted over in Media Websites, but since the thread is here ....as it happens, I've recently been putting a selection of clips together from the various It'll Be Alright On The Night shows I've taped over the years, and you can find them on my website here :-

http://www.eddietalbot.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tv/cockups/index.html