Battle of Northern ITV V Southern ITV

In the early days of ITV the regional companies did only have limited access to the distribution circuits up and down the country but that limitation disappeared as ITV grew.

The ITV circuitry, if you like, consisted of a mixture of permanently rented circuits between the individual ITV studio centres and their local BT/GPO switching centre and more permanently rented circuits between the BT/GPO switching centres. For example there might be 4 in/out circuits between Southern telly and the switching centre in downtown Southampton and thence onward to the BT tower in London, and 10 intercity circuits between the BT tower and say the BT tower in Birmingham, and more and more as you go up country. These circuits were omnipresent if you like and available for use at any time subject to the joint requirements of the individual ITV companies. In addition you could rent contribution circuits on an ad-hoc basis as and when you required them. You also had protection circuits which were there to provide a backup if a 'parallel' circuit went faulty for example. You could have access to these circuits, and do what you wanted with them, but they could be taken away at short notice if they were required for their real use. Think about that, the importance of the material on that circuit, and its potential consequences for you if the circuit was taken away. The GPO/BT only switched circuits, they did not switch programmes - a subtle point but an extremely important difference. Postie switched the hardware, ITV switched around what was being sent on that hardware. The networking of programmes is a different topic.

In the days of the ITA and IBA the ITV companies were not permitted to rent PO circuits and distribute their programnmes, these circuits were rented by the IBA/ITV on their behalf and the ITA/IBA staff in London arranged all the lines switches and operations in conjunction with the individual companies. That sounds odd, but makes sense when you consider the ITV companies were programmes contractors (ie programme makers) and not broadcasters - that was the ITA/IBA's remit. That all changed in 1993.

I'm little confused by some of the terminology here, By 'pushing' it do you mean 'broadcasting it' - to itself and to the rest of the ITV network? TSW and Grampian are a long way apart. If they were no other considerations one of those companies could record it in on the original YTV transmission and replay it to 'itself' and the other companies when they all wanted it - IF the circuits were available on the day and time in question. Or, no reason why one or more of the other companies can't record it for themselves when YTV are originally networking it (likely to have lot of dormant capacity on the intercity circuits at that time). OR, YTV could play it out again at another time to those companies when they wanted it for direct transmission or to record in themselves.

The question you pose, whilst simple in it's point, has numerous correct answers all dependent on what else is going on around the ITV network circuits at the time of original transmission and when all those companies want to transmit it themselves later on - whether all at that same time or not.

I did mean broadcast.

From what I can gather Emmerdale was broadcast in advance in those 5.15pm areas. The only other programme going at that time was blockbusters,

Is it possible some where on the BT circuits there were only two lines being used one for Blockbusters ( from Central) and one for Emmerdale ( From YTV) . TVS donest matter because there were showing Sons and daughters to its self.

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Possible? - yes, but who knows. At the same time Granada might have been playing out something else to Scottish, or Anglia playing out something to HTV. Etc etc - All using up circuits which is another reason it all had to be controlled and co-ordinated by one set of schedulers - at the ITA/IBA.

Do you not see a lot of what was going on around the ITV network was likely to be entirely unrelated to what viewers were seeing on their tellies at home at any given time.

A slightly more recent example is the 2002 World Cup cliffhanger of Crossroads, a double episode. UTV had the 5.30 slot booked for regional programmes so had to show it 30 minutes before the rest of the network. TLS would have set up a separate line to Belfast and played the episode down it with UTV recording it locally at their end. They'd then play that tape back out at 4.30pm.

No

That is actually what was being broadcast, there were only two programme at that time Blockbusters or Emmerdale farm, Between September and Following February, before changing to connections etc

unless you saying someone was play out Emmerdale farm and Scottish took that feed but as also taking another programme from Granada

I'm not saying anything. Re-read the last paragraph of my post.

You need to get your head around the fact that there was an awful lot more going on on those circuits than ITV companies simply sending programmes to other companies for transmission or recording. All the VTR commercials shown on ITV originated in the facility houses in Soho and were distributed via all these circuits on a Saturday morning. Whilst viewers were watching Tiswas all around the UK in their homes at the same time these commercials were being distributed on some of the other circuits.

On a Thursday morning whilst school children were watching ITV programmes for schools, at the same time ITV was distributing all the programme trailers/promos across the UK using other circuits.

Thanks - this is an extremely interesting discussion. I should have made my question clearer though - how would they have time shifted a programme when they were playing it back before the programme had actually ended? As you mention it was more complicated.

Wasn't there a type of VTR that would instigate a time delay of some sort? Or was it a case of recording parts of the programme on different machines and then cutting between sources on playback?

There was no delay possible with VTRs, so the only method available would have been to been, (for instance delaying a one hour programme by 30 mins) Recording a 20 minute chunk, and replaying that after 30 mins, while the next chunk was being recorded on another machine. Difficult to time the playback joins exactly.
Of cource for ITV or S4C much easier and smoother thanks to the ad breaks

The classic example of a time shift, utilising Crossroads again, is the Channel situation. They had to tape it off TSW on U-Matic at 5.20 then play it back out at 6.35.

Or of course HTV Wales, pre-S4C, where Welsh programming pre-empted much network material. Shows would be taped from the network feeds in Cardiff then played back later at night. I imagine even now STV record stuff off the network feed rather than be supplied their own copies.

S4C would have had a Channel 4 feed but I'm pretty sure this was dirty at one point. I remember reading on here about C4 pres going out where it should not have done.

For example... they only showed the Sunday omnibus of Hollyoaks. However these were the weeknight transmissions taped from C4 - they didn't take C4's feed for this, so each episode was topped and tailed.

Schools was the worst example of this. Obviously as we all know S4C had their own Schools presentation, which was timed out of Channel 4 to near enough perfection, however when it came to the additional material slides, they took Channel 4's, even with a voice over coming from Horseferry Road. Probably unnoticeable and unimportant during the ITV Schools on 4 era, however this practice carried on well into the boxes era of Channel 4 presentation.

Also when Channel 4 had 888/SUBTITLES captions at the top left of programmes, these also appeared on S4C, despite its idents having this information on screen.

I wasn't on about fact how alot of the lines where sending other stuff including shows, adverts and promos. I was just pointing out or seeing if YTV would have sent out a direct feed for the other stations, and we KNOW this is the case since at least one time in 87 because of Snooker instead of a weekday slot it there broadcast it on Sunday at the same time, so why was it all shown at the same time.

Thank you for the further explanation about how the lines were used, and what day stuff were sent out.